Franklin County jail contracts went unmonitored, audit finds $2.1M
Summary
A Washington State Auditor review of Franklin County's 2023 finances found the county went six years without collecting $937,000 in jail commissary commissions -- and separately overpaid its jail medical provider $1,211,371 between 2020 and 2024. Auditors filed both failures, plus a third at the county's HAPO Center events venue, under a single finding: contract monitoring broke down -- though the audit splits responsibility across two different county offices and identifies distinct causes for each.
Two contracts, two different kinds of loss
In 2018, Franklin County's jail food contractor was required to send monthly statements and remit 35% of net commissary sales to the county. It stopped doing both that year -- and no one at the Sheriff's Office, which was responsible for monitoring the contract, noticed until 2024, when a newly appointed Corrections Commander asked about outstanding balances. That inquiry recovered $937,000. Separately, the jail's medical services provider, under contract since 2021, billed the county for services outside the contract's scope and exceeded contracted rates for some positions; the county paid $1,211,371 more than it owed between 2020 and 2024.
View data as table
| Medical services overpayment (2020-2024) | 1,211,371 |
|---|---|
| Uncollected commissary commissions (2018-2024) | 937,000 |
The audit's cause; the county's explanation
Auditors were direct about why this happened: Sheriff's Office staff were responsible for monitoring both jail contracts, and in both cases, no one followed up when something went wrong. Franklin County's official response⧉ pushes back differently on each. On the commissary shortfall, the county disputes the audit's framing outright, stating the lapse 'was not due to a failure in county oversight but rather a lapse in the contractor's responsibilities,' pointing to staff turnover at the contractor. On the medical overpayment, the county's response is less a denial than an addition -- pointing to a billing-period mismatch (the vendor billed November-to-November; the county's books run January-to-January) and 'some misinterpretation of contract terms from the County and Vendor,' explicitly naming the county as one source of that misinterpretation.
A third contract, a different office, the same blind spot
The same audit finding covers a third county contract, but a different failure point: management of the HAPO Center, a Pasco events venue, monitored not by the Sheriff's Office but by the County Administrator's Office, which the audit says was similarly short-staffed. The county paid its HAPO contractor -- under a 2022 contract extended through June 2023 -- $37,500 in 2022 and $180,722 in 2023, without being able to produce documentation supporting the reported revenues and expenses behind either payment. When a new contractor took over in October 2023 under a separate five-year, $1.446 million agreement, the county couldn't demonstrate it monitored that contract either. Auditors said the gap was serious enough that they could not render an opinion on the HAPO Center's reported fiscal year 2023 financial activity at all.
View data as table
| 2023 | 180,722 |
|---|---|
| 2022 | 37,500 |
The takeaway
- One county, three contracts, two offices, one shared failure: nobody was checking. Jail commissary and jail medical services sat with the Sheriff's Office; the HAPO Center sat with the County Administrator's Office. Different offices, different specific causes -- but in each case, no one verified a contractor was holding up its end.
- $937,000 sat uncollected for six years before anyone asked. The commissary shortfall wasn't caught by routine oversight -- it surfaced only when a newly appointed Corrections Commander happened to inquire about outstanding balances in 2024.
- The audit and the county don't fully agree on why -- and the disagreement isn't uniform. On the commissary shortfall, the county's response directly disputes the audit's oversight-failure framing, pointing to the contractor's own turnover instead. On the medical overpayment, the county's response is more concessive, naming its own contract misinterpretation alongside a billing-cycle mismatch. Both accounts agree on the dollar figures.
This piece is based on a single Washington State Auditor accountability audit (Report No. 1037048), covering Franklin County's fiscal year 2023. It is an internal-controls finding, not a fraud investigation, and the audit does not allege criminal wrongdoing by the county or either contractor. The $937,000 and $1,211,371 figures are cumulative totals spanning 2018-2024 and 2020-2024 respectively -- periods that extend beyond the FY2023 audit year itself, reflecting how long each shortfall had been accumulating before it was caught. As of the report's April 2025 publication date, neither amount was confirmed recovered: the county said commissary collections were 'underway,' and auditors said they would review corrective action at the next audit. Franklin County's full written response, including its planned corrective actions, is included in the underlying report.
Sources(1) ▾
- Office of the Washington State Auditor, Accountability Audit Report, Franklin County -- For the period January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2023 (Report No. 1037048) (2025-04-17) — The State Auditor's accountability audit of Franklin County, Washington for fiscal year 2023, containing Finding 2023-001 on contract-monitoring failures across the county's HAPO Center management contracts and its jail food/commissary and medical services contracts. This piece draws on the finding's description, cause, and effect sections, and Franklin County's official written response. portal.sao.wa.gov · original document
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Franklin County, Washington went six years without collecting $937,000 owed to it by its jail's food and commissary contractor, and separately overpaid its jail medical provider $1,211,371, according to the Washington State Auditor's 2023 accountability audit⧉ of the county. Both failures trace to the same finding: no one in county government was checking whether either contractor was actually meeting its contract terms.