OLYMPIA, Wash. — Longtime civil servant Scott Smith said he faced unrelenting hostility and retaliation after refusing to change his economic forecast last year on the expected price of gas in Washington state.
On Tuesday, Smith, the former state economist, filed a lawsuit against his former employer, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), the governor’s office and its budget wing, the Office of Financial Management (OFM).
Smith, 64, was the primary WSDOT employee tasked with forecasting fuel consumption, pricing and revenues from gas taxes and fees.
After 35 years working as a public sector economist, Smith said his career was ruined for his refusal to lie about how a new state policy, according to his mathematical calculations in early 2023, would jack up prices at the pump by 45 to 50 cents per gallon.
In the lawsuit, he said the retaliation was so bad, he was “constructively discharged” on Nov. 2, 2023. Smith’s attorney, Jackson Maynard, the executive director of the conservative nonprofit Citizen Action Defense Fund, said his superiors deliberately created working conditions so intolerable that his client had no option but to quit.
“He was trying to do his job with integrity, and he was punished for it,” Maynard said.
Smith said not only did he lose his job and his ability to make a living, but his mental health suffered as well. He said he’s lost 20 pounds and has been prescribed medications to treat serious anxiety since the fall out.
“Your mind races. Oh my Lord, it kind of robs you of joy. ... This has not been a good day,” Smith said.
How it began
Trouble started for Smith after the state ushered in a new state policy in January aimed at fighting carbon emissions and climate change, according to the complaint.
The cap-and-trade program, a component of Washington’s Climate Commitment Act passed by the legislature in 2021, puts a cap on maximum emissions and issues allowances. The system charges the state’s biggest polluters for their carbon emissions. The money is then spent on initiatives to reduce the state’s reliance on fossil fuels.
State leaders told consumers not to worry: the cap-and-trade system wouldn’t add much to the price of gas. Two months before the policy went into effect, a top official at the Department of Ecology said drivers wouldn’t notice.
“I don’t think it’s going to be noticeable,” said the Department of Ecology’s Climate Policy Section Manager Joel Creswell in November 2022.
In March, another Ecology manager echoed the sentiment.
“All in all, over time, we don’t think we’re going to see a big impact on prices at the pump, on customer prices,” said Ecology’s Climate Commitment Act Implementation Manager Luke Martland.
“That [analysis] flies in the face of reality,” Smith said. “It’s really sixth-grade math.”
Smith said his supervisor talked to him about keeping his prediction out of publicly available reports on two separate occasions, claiming they said that “management would prefer” he not include cap-and-trade prices in his report. In the complaint, Smith said he understood management to be top analysts from OFM.
Smith said he refused.
“You just don’t do stuff like that," Smith said. "You don’t.”
After that, he said the retaliation ranged from small issues, such as being refused basic software upgrades, to having his job eliminated through a bill passed by the legislature last year.
“Defendants worked in collaboration to request and support the passage of HB 1838, which eliminated Plaintiff’s position and transferred it to another agency in 2025,” wrote Maynard in the complaint.
Smith kept records
Smith provided KING with emails he said he wrote to himself at the time to memorialize the conversations with his boss.
In an email dated Jan. 18, 2023, Smith wrote: “At 10:30 today [my temporary supervisor] called me and instructed me, per OFM, not to write any emails about cap and trade because of a potential public records request. I was also instructed tentatively not to include any cap and trade adjustments in my gasoline price estimate.”
On Jan. 20, 2023 Smith wrote a follow-up email to himself.
“[My supervisor] also informed me on the 18th that Amber (a WSDOT manager) would 'prefer' no adjustments for climate commitment act surcharges. I informed [the supervisor] that under no circumstances would I 'jimmy' the numbers. He agreed that would be inappropriate.”
In an email dated Jan. 24, 2023, Smith wrote: “[The supervisor] tried to restate his instructions about the price estimate. He stated that “'We would prefer if you would keep your assumptions (on gas prices) unchanged from November.’”
“In my entire career, I haven’t had anyone actually explicitly ask me to change the number, in my entire career. And I’ve been doing this since 1987,” Smith said in an interview with KING.
In December, Smith filed paperwork that alerted the state of his intent to sue.
At that time, a spokesperson for Gov. Jay Inslee's office said no one from the governor’s office asked Smith to hide numbers or retaliated against him, but that an independent investigation would take place to “thoroughly review all the facts to see what can be substantiated.”
“The OFM individual named in the letter has expressed surprise and no recollection of events matching Mr. Smith’s claims regarding how his analysis would be used. He does not recall ever talking with this individual about the Climate Commitment Act and does not recall needing to “approve” or review reports from Mr. Smith,” wrote Deputy Communications Director for the Office of the Governor Mike Faulk in December. Faulk also said it was the legislature that made changes that would move Smith’s essential duties to another agency.
“His position was not eliminated by WSDOT and the decision of where to house the role was made by lawmakers,” Faulk wrote.
In a statement, a WSDOT spokesperson said they are taking the whistleblower allegations "very seriously."
"What our agency can say is limited as this is both an investigation and legal matter," wrote Stefanie Randolph, WSDOT Deputy Communications Director. "We expect our personnel investigation to be complete by the end of March."
Smith said he has applied for jobs in other states that he is fully qualified for, yet he’s not getting any responses.
“I wanted to keep working, not just mentally but financially, I’ve been damaged. I want to be made whole,” Smith said. “I’m a working guy. I’m just a guy trying to do his job. And that’s not what I was allowed to do. I got crushed.”
The state has 20 days to respond to the suit.