Mission Omission
What Redmond Pastor Ken Hutcherson Failed to Disclose About His "Christian Values"–Fueled Campaign
Kelly O
Tools
It's well known that Pastor Ken Hutcherson, the leader of Redmond's Antioch Bible Church, has it out for the members of the Snoqualmie Valley School Board. They got on his bad side in 2008 by allowing a "Day of Silence" at Mount Si High School that was designed to raise awareness of discrimination faced by gay teenagers.
What's less well known is that after Hutcherson lost his 2008 fight over the Mount Si Day of Silence, and after he got booed while speaking at Mount Si's Martin Luther King Jr. Day assembly that same year, he quietly made it his business to make the entire Snoqualmie Valley School District feel some pain.
Stranger Personals
Specifically, this year Hutcherson used money from a nonprofit he controls to help fight against a $56 million bond measure that would have helped repair Mount Si High School's decaying floors, installed wheelchair accessible ramps in the school's portables, and fixed other buildings in the district (while also paying for construction of a new middle school).
"I said, 'All right, there's more than one way to skin a cat,'" Hutcherson told The Stranger on September 16, explaining his opposition to the bond measure.
The measure failed by one vote in a February 8 special election. Then, after Hutcherson took out a newspaper ad against it and flew an anti-bond-measure banner behind an airplane, the measure failed again in an April 26 special election—this time by about 1,000 votes.
Problem is: Hutcherson didn't tell the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission about the money he was spending to fight the bond measure, even though he was behind two sizable independent expenditures. In April, Hutcherson used the nonprofit KHM Families Inc. to pay $450 for the half-page ad, which ran in the Snoqualmie Valley Record and urged people to vote no on the bond measure because "we cannot trust the school board to protect our children." He also used the nonprofit to foot the $500 bill for hiring the airplane to pull a banner around the school district's skies reading: "VOTE NO ON THE SNO VALLEY SCHOOL BOND."
Hutcherson told The Stranger that he wasn't aware of the reporting requirements, and that the expenditures fit within his nonprofit's mission, "Because it's for helping families—helping families stand strong on the Christian values." (The most recent tax filing available for KHM Families Inc. declares that the nonprofit operates "exclusively for charitable and religious purposes.")
Hutcherson added that he resorted to hiring a plane to pull a banner because "it cost more than a hit man." He then said he was joking about the hit-man thing.
Lori Anderson, spokesperson for the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission, says Hutcherson's lack of expenditure reporting could ultimately result in a fine, "if they don't file the report." The commission, Anderson said, will be getting in touch with him.
Hutcherson, for his part, said he's waiting to be contacted. "I have not heard anything," he said. "If they want the books, the books are wide open." 
With research by news intern Marley Zeno.
1
That's some classy shit right there.
7
Also, allegedly Xtian leaders think it's funny to joke about killing people?
And they think that making things worse for people and children and schools is a way to further Christian values?
Ye gods. The man has gone mad with what little power he has.
8
This was Hutch attempting to make a joke about the relative cost of a plane vs. a hit man.
I didn't get it at first, either.
10
11
Isn't it time someone reported him?
12
Luke something something...
david duerson had honor. ken's a living, angry mess.
15
16
The penalty should be a fine, losing tax exempt status and getting exiled to Canada by trebuchet.
Ken is being a douche, wielding what little power he has available to him. It doesn't sound like much but $1,000 spent on a school bond election can make the difference of a couple of percentage points. Add on to that the burden that school bonds require 60% of the vote (The only item left that requires 60% of the electorate) and it gets very hard to pass a bond.
They should plead with God to plague the School Board's harvest with locusts, then burn the buildings and kill everyone - women and children too. Plenty of "Christian Values (tm)" precedent for that in the Good Book.
yur Religiosity's a Crutch
for such a curmudgeon
to use it as a bludgeon
is a bit much.
But, Thank GOD Religion is such Good Business!
27
Dear Hutch Hutcherson,
Make you a deal, you keep your church out of our schools and we'll keep our government out of your church. It's the same deal we've made everyone else and it seems to have worked just fine for the last 235 years or so.
Other than abusing our blameless neighbo(u)rs to the north, I like the cut of your jib. And your nym!
RSS
Twitter
Comments (31) RSS