If there is one behavior you can expect from Jay Inslee, it is that he will go out of his way to hide the truth of his failures from the public. The latest example of Inslee’s secrecy strategy comes from a new report that reveals a mistake on court sentencing forms resulted in the reduction of “community supervision and treatment time for at least 73 Washington state sex offenders participating in a special program.”
Inslee has known about this sad situation since January. But has he said anything in public about this administrative snafu?
Of course not.
The special program, called the Special Sex Offender Sentencing Alternative (SSOSA) program, is “designed to lower the chance for a repeat crime by certain first-time felony sex offenders considered a low risk to the community.”
The Seattle Times reports that the incorrect form had incorrect form had been used since 2008. Officials claim that they only became aware of the problem in January. Via the Seattle Times:
“After being alerted to the incorrect form in January by the state Attorney General’s Office, DOC (Department of Corrections) reviewed the sentences of about 760 offenders who were in the program at the time.
“The review found that the error shortened community-supervision time for 73 offenders who were still going through the program, according to DOC spokesman Jeremy Barclay…
“The sentencing form error shaved 12 months off community supervision in the case of one Clark County offender, according to court records.”
Inslee was notified of the problem in January. Yet, despite the fact that Inslee knew state lawmakers were reviewing significant problems at his DOC during the legislative session, he failed to inform the Legislature, or the public, of this particular scandal.
This is just another example of Inslee’s many administrative failures as governor — it’s no wonder that he would rather go on the attack than stand on his record of failed leadership.
