Palouse mayor logs city calls on WSU clock

Palouse Mayor Michael Echanove has spent too much time on personal business at his job at WSU, according to an internal WSU audit report released Dec. 11.

The audit was prompted after Palouse resident Steve McGehee complained to WSU auditors that Echanove was using his work time at WSU to attend to tasks related to his service as Palouse mayor and other public positions.

As far as discipline is concerned, the auditors suggested Echanove undergo some state ethics training, as well as “personnel actions appropriate to the violations and conditions noted,” to Echanove’s supervisor’s in the office of Information Technology.

WSU spokesman James Tinney Monday said he did not yet know what disciplinary measures would be taken.

“Our review of evidence substantiated the assertion that university resources were misused,” read a line from the report, which Echanove gave to the Gazette.

The audit found Echanove had made about 29.5 hours of non-WSU related phone calls over a 15-month period. A little less than a third of those communications were to family members.

Echanove publicly announced the preliminary results of the report at a November city council session in Palouse. About a dozen residents were present at the council session.

“I can always get better at the things I do,” Echanove told the Gazette after the meeting.

The WSU audit findings were forwarded to the WSU vice president of Information Systems Viji Murali and WSU President Elson Floyd.

“I guess the severity of it is up for each individual person to judge,” said Tinney. “It is being treated as a personnel matter within IT (Information Technology). That is an ongoing process.”

Tinney said it was up to the Information Technology department to decide the disciplinary measures.

Tinney pointed out WSU employees serve on the city council and other city positions in Pullman.

“The expectation is that people who are in those positions will carry out those positions on their own time, not using state time and state equipment to do so. That is the bottom line issue of this audit.”

According to WSU guidelines which were included with the report of Echanove, only a limited amount of WSU office activity can be unrelated to WSU matters.

Echanove provided the Gazette with a copy of the audit report Monday. McGehee also offered to give the Gazette a copy of the report.

From fiscal year 2005 until the date of the audit, Nov. 16, the internal audit found Echanove had made 459 local phone calls to and from sources not related to his work at WSU. Also, 146 e-mails unrelated to WSU activities, were sent or received over this time span.

“There was a vast outpouring of support for Mayor Echanove when this whole thing became known,” said Palouse citizen Doug Willcox.

Willcox called McGehee’s work “nonsense,” saying that when McGehee went to Echanove’s place of work, this clearly showed a personal vendetta against the mayor.

“Reviewing the findings, there is nothing very serious about this use of WSU resources. Most of the phone calls were local,” Willcox said.

McGehee informed WSU auditors that he noticed many of Echanove’s communications originated from the mayor’s WSU office. McGehee obtained copies of the mayoral communications through public information requests to city hall.

A former city councilman, McGehee, has a history of checking on Palouse city matters, working to expose what he says is a corrupt small-town government.

He and a friend have turned in dozens of public records requests to Palouse, prompting the town to tighten its request guidelines.

Other Palouse residents, including letter writers to the Gazette in the Nov. 26 edition, contend McGehee has a personal vendetta against the mayor.

McGehee said in a later interview with the Gazette that his complaint to the WSU office was merely to hold a public official accountable. He denied having a personal vendetta against the mayor.

“If I had a personal agenda it would be that the citizens of Palouse would take over the responsibility of policing their own government,” he said.

When asked if the results of the audit furthered his quest to better Palouse government, McGehee said he didn’t know.

“That remains to be seen. I really don’t know,” he said. “My only response is that nobody is above the law.”

McGehee Monday did not want the Gazette to quote the letters to the editor that said he has a personal vendetta against the mayor in this story. He said this reporter was practicing “yellow journalism” and this would focus the story on him rather than the Echanove audit.

He also referred to the Gazette as the “National Enquirer.”