Unfortunately, for Belinda Stewart, the line was blurred. An independent panel has concluded that the agency’s communications director likely broke ethics laws by doing work for nonprofits on the state’s dime.
There should have been no link between Stewart’s volunteer activities on behalf of three nonprofit organizations and her work as the spokeswoman for the agency. Her volunteer activities should have been performed from home and outside the workday, not combined with her state responsibilities. Her bosses didn’t help matters any by facilitating and encouraging Stewart’s nonprofit work.
The state Executive Ethics Board recently voted 3-0 to declare there is “reasonable cause” to believe ethics violations were committed that warrant a fine of more than $500, a threshold for the board.
Investigators will now seek a response from Stewart to their 26-page report, and will schedule a hearing in her case.
State Sen. Mike Carrell, R-Lakewood, sent a letter to Corrections Secretary Bernie Warner after the vote asking him to fire Stewart.
“I would hope that he would be using this as a reason to clean house,” said Carrell, who filed one of three ethics complaints against Stewart. “This didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was condoned by people up the food chain.”
The newly released report said Stewart “may have violated ethics laws when she used state resources including her time, her staff’s time, state computers, state vehicles and the state electronic mail system far in excess of the de minimis (negligible) use rule to further the agenda of” nonprofits.
Stewart was involved with three nonprofits: the National Association of Women in Criminal Justice; the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice and the Washington Corrections Association.
Justifying her volunteer work, Stewart said, “It helps connect the agency with the community. That networking helps to develop staff. Everything that I have done, I have felt like I was doing the work of the agency.”
The problem was the work with the nonprofits was mixed with her communication duties.
A review of Stewart’s calendars found that she dedicated hours of state time working on the nonprofits, including more than 50 hours since 2008 for the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice. Investigators also found almost 3,000 emails in Stewart’s state account that were placed in a folder labeled “NABCJ.”
The ethics board’s report suggests Stewart helped rewrite DOC policies on use of state resources after her activities came under scrutiny.
Other key findings of the report:
• Stewart drove state vehicles to prisons in Belfair and Eastern Washington to teach classes for DOC employees as part of her Women in Criminal Justice group. She also drove state cars to Seattle or Tacoma at least four times for meetings of another group she led, the Faith Based Re-Entry Coalition.
• She used state time and her state computer to prepare materials for her outside employment as an instructor for the National Institute of Corrections.
• Stewart used her position to hire four people she knew from her church to work at a retirement dinner for a DOC employee at the Schmidt House in Tumwater. She paid them $200 out of the $30-per-plate admission charge.
DOC Secretary Warner said Stewart’s work on behalf of the nonprofit organizations was intended to “promote diversity and provide professional, industry-specific training to staff.” But he said he would remove the nonprofits from access to state resources until a review is finished.
We agree with Sen. Carrell when he says, “At the very least, I believe (Stewart) exercised exceptionally poor judgment in mixing her state and personal business affairs, and that she regularly misused state resources in support of those personal affairs.”
The Corrections secretary must rewrite agency rules to draw a clear line between state responsibilities and volunteer work on behalf of nonprofit organizations. Those rules must make it clear that state resources cannot be used and that volunteer work must be done on private time and away from the office.
