Boss pleads guilty

Ex-potato commission exec sentenced

GRANT COUNTY — A former director of the Washington State Potato Commission says he doesn't plan to hide after admitting to a mistake.

Pat Boss pleaded guilty in Grant County District Court Wednesday to a charge of official misconduct, a misdemeanor charge.

Restitution was set with Boss paying $16,441 back to the potato commission and $2,193 to the court in fees, according to Grant County District Court records.

Boss must also serve five days in jail, which he said can be served over a period of one year. An additional 359 days of jail time was suspended on the condition Boss does not commit any crimes during the next two years, according to court records.

Boss' plea followed an October 2006 report published by the state's Auditor's Office, which described 13 examples of misappropriation of public funds and falsification of accounting records, including use of the commission's credit card to pay hotel charges for his family, purchase airline tickets to Japan and jewelry.

"This has been no big secret," Boss said in a telephone interview Thursday. "It's not like people didn't know it was going on. I guess from my standpoint, it's kind of a relief it's coming to a conclusion and I can begin to pick up the pieces and move on. I'm relieved it's over with."

Boss described his lifestyle at the time, which included a lot of travel and much time in Asia and Washington, D.C., working for the commission, and feels he lost his "center of gravity."

"I think certain types of people can get caught up in that lifestyle," he said. "I exercised some very poor judgments with my credit card."

Boss has had a lot of chances to reflect back on the time, he said, and he believes he has learned from the experience, including how to better deal with such situations.

"Sometimes a person who's had as many things happen to him as I've had — I had a lot of good things happen to me at a very young age — probably needed to be knocked down a little bit and I think this was a good wake-up call for me," he said.

Boss said the people he hears from have been supportive. He believes he can turn a negative situation into a positive learning experience and not get sucked in by such temptations again.

Boss credited his wife Danielle and his attorney Garth Dano as supporting him.

He plans to continue his work as a consultant.

"If people expect me to go away and hide somewhere, that's not how I operate and I'm not planning to disappear or go away," he said. "I think any time a person's in a situation like this, they have to buck up, admit their mistakes and move on, and that's what I'm trying to do here."

"I think this is just kind of the final chapter in the book," the potato commission's current executive director, Chris Voigt, said. "We're happy this is behind us, and we can focus 100 percent of our attention on doing good things for the industry and not having any types of distractions like this. We're happy to have it behind us."