Lt. Gov. Brad Owen has reached a settlement with the Washington State Executive Ethics Board that fines him $15,000 for using state resources for his nonprofit organization Strategies For Youth.
The settlement, released Friday and which Owen has agreed to, would allow him to pay only $10,000 of the fine if he commits no other ethics violations for the next two years.
The ethics investigation came after revelations that Owen mixed his official duties with his nonprofit, including using state staff to schedule Strategies For Youth activities. Owen’s office also hired one of his nonprofit’s workers and later held the organization’s board meetings in his state office, according to the settlement.
Read the settlement here.
Though he agreed in the settlement that if the case went to a hearing, “the Board would likely conclude that Brad Owen conducted activities incompatible with his public duty,” Owen sounded defiant in a statement Friday.
“This settlement is agreed to merely to put an end to a frustrating process that does not allow me or any elected official the right to be heard by a jury of our peers as is guaranteed any other citizen,” he said. “Therefore, any further effort would just take away from the important work of my office.”
For more on just what the work of Owen’s office entails, read our pieces from 2003 and 2008.