ASHFORD — The former superintendent of Mount Rainier National Park was promoted to head Grand Canyon National Park this summer even though he was previously reprimanded for selling his home to a contractor at far more than market value, according to a new report.
An investigation by The Seattle Times published Sunday revealed that David Uberuaga was reprimanded by the National Park Service in 2008 after investigators learned he sold his three-bedroom home in Ashford for $425,000 to Peter Whittaker, whose company, Rainier Mountaineering Inc., then held a multimillion-dollar monopoly as the park’s official climbing-guide service. The sale took place six years earlier, and the price was more than three times the home’s assessed value.
Uberuaga never recused himself from park-business dealings with Whittaker and repeatedly offered only a vague description of the deal on his federal ethics-disclosure forms, according to records reviewed by the Times. Even when pressed for more details by a federal ethics officer, he failed to immediately reveal that the man paying an unusually high price for his home also owned the park’s largest concessions contract.
Uberuaga conceded that the sale looked suspicious, but said it wasn’t a kickback, and at one point he passed a polygraph examination about that. He also said he never intentionally withheld information.
“I was confident with my integrity,” Uberuaga told The Times. “I didn’t have anything to hide. I feel very good about 27 years of decisions that I’ve made. My actions have to be above reproach every single day on every single thing I do. That’s the way I’ve always been.”
The property at issue is a 2-acre parcel on state Route 706, with the iconic 14,410-foot Mount Rainier looming in the background. Uberuaga sold it to Whittaker, a friend and neighbor, in 2002 at the agreed upon price after listing the property publicly for just two weeks – a listing that investigators later determined was designed just to make the sale appear proper.
Around the same time, Uberuaga was heading an effort to revamp the way concessions contracts were handled at the mountain – meaning that Rainier Mountaineering’s decades-long virtual monopoly on climbing services there was coming to an end.
A draft plan called for splitting the commercial guiding permits equally among three companies. But the final plan, released in 2005, gave Rainier Mountaineering half of the park’s annual commercial-climbing permits. Two competitors were awarded 25 percent each.
Uberuaga signed a single-page document attesting that he knew of no conflict of interest that he had regarding the contracts.
Uberuaga said he did his own real estate “market analysis” and thought the price was reasonable for commercial properties in the area. He said he sought advice from the Park Service’s regional solicitor’s office in Portland because he knew his property could wind up in the hands of a major park business partner. The office told him he could sell the property to anyone, but that he should make the process as public as possible and entertain all offers.
Whittaker acknowledged buying the property at a premium, and told The Times the timing of the sale “looks very cozy and close. I understand how people could look at that and think there was something going on. But I have nothing to hide.”
He said he had hoped to use the property for a new welcome center and climbing museum, and wanted to snatch it up before a competitor bought it.
“Kickbacks, special consideration … are you serious?” Whittaker said. “We got, if anything, less attention after the real estate deal.”
RMI lost roughly one-third of its overall Rainier climbing revenue with the 2006 contract revisions, he said. The company’s franchise fee – a percentage of gross receipts paid to the park – jumped from 4 percent to 7 percent in previous contracts to 15 percent. The company in 2010 paid the park $305,000 on $2.1 million in gross revenues.
Investigators with the Interior Department’s Office of the Inspector General began investigating in 2008 after receiving a tip of a conflict of interest regarding the contract revisions. According to documents The Times obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request, they eventually concluded that Uberuaga “made false statements or concealed material facts” about the sale of his home. In late 2008, they referred the case to federal prosecutors in Seattle, who declined to prosecute.
The Park Service gave Uberuaga a letter of reprimand. It was signed by Jonathan Jarvis, a former Rainier superintendent who went on to become the National Park Service director in 2009. Jarvis also signed off on Uberuaga’s promotion to one of the service’s most prestigious positions this year: superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park.
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