William Hainsey has two major problems right now. And only one of them has to do with the money he took from his union. On July 18, Hainsey, formerly treasurer of National Veterans Affairs Council 249, an affiliate of the American Federation of Government Employees, was sentenced in Clark County (Wash.) Superior Court to 15 months in prison for stealing more than $45,000 in funds from the Vancouver, Wash.-based labor organization. He also was ordered to serve three years of probation and pay full restitution plus a $500 fine. Hainsey, out on bail since his arrest, had been charged back in August 2012, and pleaded guilty this March 20 following an investigation by the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards. The council represents about 10,000 employees in 12 local unions.
Court records indicate that Hainsey, now 66, a resident of Vancouver, Wash., on more than 100 occasions withdrew council funds totaling $45,574 for his personal use during the period January 2006-September 2011. Additionally, he asked former Council President Mike Kepner to sign IRS documents falsified by Hainsey in order to conceal the embezzlement. At sentencing, Hainsey told the court that he was having financial problems, and that he had paid back part of the stolen money, though not all of it. “I accept responsibility for it,” he said. “I took it out, and I tried to put it back in.”
The consequences of embezzlement may have been the lesser of Hainsey’s conundrums. Part of his 15-month sentence was for second-degree possession of child pornography on his computer, an offense to which he had pleaded guilty on May 28. As part of his sentence, the court ordered him to register as a sex offender for 10 years, undergo psychological treatment, and have no contact with minors. His attorney, David Schultz, said that the explicit sexual images were part of a shared person-to-person program; Hainsey deleted the photos soon afterward. “It was an isolated period of time,” said Schultz. His client, unfortunately, is facing a far more isolated future.