DARRINGTON — Questionable financial procedures, alleged improper record-keeping and an outdated sales tax have added up to a dire financial situation for the town of Darrington.
However, the mayor and the town council don’t know how bad it is.
This comes after years of warnings from state auditors that the town’s internal controls were insufficient to detect financial misstatements.
That’s one of the alarming discoveries made by Paula Swisher, Brier’s city clerk and treasurer for almost 24 years. At the request of Darrington Mayor Dan Rankin, Swisher said she has spent more than 40 unpaid hours over the past month meeting with Darrington Town Council members and Rankin to review the town’s financials and procedures.
Rankin asked for her help after the former town clerk and deputy clerk submitted their resignations in July.
The job was more than she expected.
“I went into it thinking, ‘Oh, you just want me to help you try and find somebody to fill the position,’” Swisher said in an interview Thursday. “Maybe give them a little bit of advice … instead I found out that they were a mess.”
While the total deficit is unknown, Darrington has about $200,000 in bills it isn’t paying right now, she said.
“They don’t have the money and they need to make sure they can make payroll each month,” Swisher said. “You can’t run a city if you have no bodies.”
The specific bills not getting paid are currently unknown, and Billie Lee Burtenshaw, Darrington council member and mayor pro tem, did not respond to multiple follow-up emails on this topic. However, not paying the bills allows the town to pay its staff, Swisher said.
The town council learned of the town’s financial situation on July 8, Burtenshaw said Wednesday after a regular meeting.
“I was more shocked that we were broke,” she said. “It’s very overwhelming. We’re all doing the best we can and we’ll get there.”
The council and mayor had “blind trust” in the town’s former clerk and treasurer, Dianne Davis, Swisher said.
“There’s so much available out there to make sure that people get that kind of training and get that information and make sure that they’re providing that good service,” she said. “It breaks my heart a little bit because I feel like it ends up looking like a black mark on the clerk profession.”
Davis declined to comment during a phone call Friday.
According to Swisher, Davis wasn’t using the town’s financial software properly or providing the town council with financial reports, Swisher said.
“The former clerk had said to me, the first day that I was there, was that she no longer provided them regular financial updates and reports because nobody ever read them,” Swisher said. “So it was a waste of her time.”
Davis took information from the town’s financial software and balanced its budgets in Excel spreadsheets, Swisher said.
“That is not a municipal budget and that is not how you have checks and balances,” she said. “They’ve been paying for software for 11 years that hasn’t been being correctly used.”
Yearly state audits from 2020 to 2024 all said the town’s lack of internal controls was a “material weakness,” meaning a financial misstatement would not be prevented or detected in a timely manner.
The state auditor’s office is currently auditing Darrington’s financial condition, spokesperson Adam Wilson said in an email Thursday. They plan to release their 2025 findings before the end of the month and plan to meet with town council members, but have not finalized a date, he said.
After a special council meeting on Sept. 2, Burtenshaw reached out to three financial consultants. She confirmed during Wednesday’s meeting that two responded.
“I’ll have more information soon on that, and we’ll be able to get someone in here to get you guys some budget answers that you guys all really want,” she said during the meeting.
One of them is a retired city clerk and treasurer from a different city, Swisher said after the Wednesday meeting.
“Hopefully she’ll come up and help them because I think she could really do a great job,” she said.
Darrington financial records, provided to The Herald by Darrington resident Erin Roberts, show “interfund loans,” or transfers between accounts, which were unknown to the town council, Burtenshaw said after the Wednesday meeting.
In 2025, the town’s general fund received a total of $215,766 in interfund loans. The general fund also transferred out $26,693.
Records show one interfund loan of $15,752 came out of the parks account. The town’s capital improvement account received a $127,662 loan then transferred out $206,000. The water account received a $15,846 loan and transferred out $52,843. The town’s garbage account received $36,487 and transferred $23,938, records show. A reserve account for water capital improvements transferred $69,887. The cemetery fund received $23,535 and transferred $22,183.
Records also show transfers in 2024 and sometimes show which month the transfer occurred. Sometimes the month is not indicated.
“There was no council approval, no paper trail,” said Roberts, who owns a bakery in Darrington and ran the Western Washington division of the American Cancer Society for 10 years.
Roberts started asking the town council and mayor about the transfers during meetings in May and June, she said. After which, Davis’ work came into question.
On Sept. 2, Swisher told the council and mayor that the council must approve transfers between accounts. Also, many funds are restricted and can only be used for specific purposes, while the general fund is more flexible.
According to Eric Lowell, a financial consultant with the Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington, interfund loans are allowed but have a few stipulations.
Transfers from the general fund are generally fine because the funding is unrestricted, he said in an interview Friday. Loans from restricted funds must be repaid within three years, with interest, Lowell said.
All interfund loans must be approved by council, unless they are paid back within 60 days and the town has a budget policy in place that allows short-term loans, he said.
If Darrington’s interfund loans are found to not be in compliance, “the auditors would give them a finding, which is really just a slap on the wrist,” Lowell said.
According to RCW 35.33.170, if a city official knowingly fails to perform their financial duties, they could be guilty of a misdemeanor and could be fined up to $500 for each violation. However, Lowell said this type of punishment happens very rarely.
Swisher spent most of the Sept. 2 meeting advising on proper meeting procedures and public transparency under the Open Public Meetings Act and Public Records Act.
“I just feel like they haven’t been given a lot of guidance by the people who are supposed to be up on all of this,” she said in the Thursday interview.
She also discussed the mayor’s spending authority, the town’s outdated website and code and provided other recommendations.
“I found that in their code, it says that their sales and use tax hasn’t changed since 1970,” Swisher said. “For a city that’s in financial trouble, that was something they needed to look at.”
On Aug. 5, Rankin read a statement calling Darrington’s situation a “financial crisis.”
“We cannot move forward without first understanding how we got here,” Rankin said. “We are beginning a thorough review of the town’s finances. We will examine our revenues, expenses, budgeting practices, financial controls and past decisions.”
During public comment, Roberts requested Rankin’s resignation on Wednesday, but the mayor was absent.
On Sept. 3, Rankin left for a planned, three-week vacation in Europe.
Rankin did consider canceling the vacation, he said during a Friday interview, “but I have a great council and I have staff that I believe in and trust that they’re going to make good and sound decisions.”
During the Wednesday meeting, Swisher guided the town council through proper public comment procedure, motions and votes.
For example, town council member Reed Rankin asked at one point if he could ask a question about a previous business item that wasn’t on the agenda.
“Those people look at your agenda to know what you’re going to talk about and be prepared for whatever topics you may bring up,” Swisher said during the meeting while gesturing to the audience. “Also, depending upon what the item is and if motions were made regarding it, that can affect whether or not you can bring it up in a meeting and go back to it.”
She recommended not asking the question and perhaps adding it to a future agenda.
Burtenshaw said after the meeting that she and the council are grateful to have Swisher’s help.
“We were caught off guard, and we are doing everything we can to help our town. Because we care,” she said.
Mayor Rankin said Darrington leadership is doing “all the right things” to put people in the right places “to get the answers, to create direction for the financial stability of the town.” He added that it is premature to make any sort of statement on where the town is at.
During a Thursday interview, Roberts said she doesn’t have confidence in Rankin’s ability to turn Darrington’s financial situation around, even after Rankin told her otherwise.
Swisher believes this is not the right time for Rankin to resign. “You already don’t have anybody in your office who knows what’s going on,” she said.
Taylor Scott Richmond: 425-339-3046; taylor.richmond@heraldnet.com; Bluesky: @btayokay.bsky.social
