Enron whistleblower says Employment Security Department is ‘broken by incompetence’
Jul 15, 2021, 5:47 PM
A sign at the headquarters for Washington state's Employment Security Department at the Capitol in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
(AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
Enron whistleblower Lynn Brewer has won $100,000 in a legal settlement after suing the Washington Employment Security Department for delaying her public records request.
Brewer told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show that a year ago, she had requested the communications related to fraud and text messages between former Commissioner Suzi LeVine and Governor Jay Inslee.
At the time that Brewer filed the suit, five months after the request, she hadn’t received one document. The lawsuit found that this delay was in violation of the Public Records Act. She is still receiving records a year later.
Is the Employment Security Department hindering fraud investigation?
Brewer received some of the text messages, but she says it was obvious there were texts missing. For instance, she never received any of the texts between Inslee and LeVine that were referenced in other texts that she did receive.
In the lawsuit, Brewer did find emails between the person responding to the public records request and his boss.
“Through discovery and litigation, we found emails between the individual responsible for responding and his boss, who said, ‘I’m simply not going to turn them over,'” Brewer recalled.
She believes the agency is “broken by incompetence,” and blames not just LeVine, but also new Commissioner Cami Feek for not rooting out the incompetence.
“The new commissioner, Ms. Feek, is not pulling back the covers on the organization to say, ‘Why are we such a failure?'” Brewer said.
Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.
