Shame on This Park Ranger/Super

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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016356020_rainier02m.html

Mount Rainier park ex-official scrutinized on land deal

Even with the looming backdrop of one of America's grandest peaks, the property doesn't look like much: a modest house surrounded by tall grass fields in the Mount Rainier gateway community of Ashford.

But the 2-acre parcel on Highway 706 became a very big deal to federal investigators when they learned that its owner, Mount Rainier National Park Superintendent David Uberuaga, had sold the Pierce County property at an inflated price to an owner of the company that then held a multimillion-dollar monopoly as the park's official climbing-guide service.

Uberuaga sold his three-bedroom home in 2002 to Peter Whittaker, head of Rainier Mountaineering Inc. (RMI), for $425,000, more than triple its assessed value. A five-year, owner-financed real-estate contract made the two men business partners while Uberuaga's administration was rewriting rules that would determine RMI's share of the lucrative Rainier climbing business for years to come.

Yet 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, records show. When finally pressed for more details by a federal ethics officer, he continued to conceal that the man paying an unusually handsome price for his home also owned the park's largest concessions contract.