A new memo is raising some real questions about how a WDFW commissioner was billing their time.
According to the memo, Lorna Smith claimed payment for work nearly every single day from January 2024 through February 2025 — missing only Christmas, New Year’s, and five other days. At $100 a day, that comes out to over $40,000.
That might not sound like a huge number in government terms, but here’s the problem — this role is supposed to be part-time. It’s not designed to be a daily, full-time position. So when someone is billing almost every day for over a year, it raises some pretty obvious questions.
Was that work actually tied to official commission duties?
Was it reviewed the way it should have been?
And is this really how taxpayer money is supposed to be used?
Even the independent reviewer called that level of billing “unrealistic.”
We’ve requested the actual records from WDFW so we can see exactly what was claimed and what work was done on those days. How much in total was compensated in that period. And how much has been in totall during her time on the commission.
This isn’t about jumping to conclusions — it’s about transparency. If everything is legitimate, the records should show that. If not, the public deserves to know that too.
We’ll share what we find when those records come in.
