Obscenities, Feuds and Unhappy Customers: A Look Inside Chelan County's Community Development Department
Former employees call it a 'toxic workplace' and leaked audio, documents, and public records help peel back the curtain to show disfunction and inefficiency that has community members frustrated
When Deanna Walter took the job as Chelan County’s Community Development Department in 2023 she said the order of the day was that politics was out and customer service was in.
“I plan to take the politics out of it,” she said. “We are facilitators of the code and we’re going to bend over backwards to make sure that we are transparent and helpful to the public, and timely – focusing on customer service.”
But current and former employees, public and leaked documents and a former Chelan County Commissioner paint a different picture. If anything the department has gotten worse, they say. The environment is toxic, they say, and staff members treat customers and taxpayers with disdain, as adversaries or simply ignore them. They say Walter allows her favored employees to act in ways that would get anyone fired in a normal workplace, but under the patronage of Chelan County Commissioner Kevin Overbay and the generous contract she wrote for herself, that she is free to act with impunity.
And according to leaked audio from a Spring 2024 department staff meeting, politics was certainly still a focus for the new director. Over the course of about a 12-minute discussion on the matter, Walter let it be known that she was less than impressed with Brad Hawkins, the former state senator who had just filed to run for county commissioner in District 3.
“We have a state senator who is a worthless piece of shit,” Walter said.
She went on amid nervous laughter from her staff.
Hawkins was “riding his dad’s coattails,” she said. And his father, former County Commissioner Buell Hawkins, has “no credibility anymore.”
“He doesn’t have any pull or anything,” she said.