SEQUIM — Gun enthusiasts will be waiting for a while for a shooting park near Sadie Creek.
Democrats Steve Tharinger of Sequim and Jim Hargrove of Hoquiam, two of the 24th District’s three legislators, told the monthly meeting of Concerned Citizens of Clallam County on Monday that a shooting park won’t be happening anytime soon.
The gym at the Sequim unit of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula was filled with more than 100 meeting participants.
Marv Chastain, a proponent of a shooting park near Sadie Creek, lamented to Tharinger and Hargrove that the state Department of Natural Resources has refused to transfer land back to Clallam County for the shooting park.
“This project is in absolute paralysis,” Chastain said.
The park is needed by law enforcement, will draw tourists and would be “an alternate location for shooting that goes on in places it shouldn’t,” he said.
“I’m asking for help in coaxing the [state] land commissioner,” Chastain said.
“What are you gonna do?”
Nothing they can do
At the moment, there’s nothing they can do, Hargrove and Tharinger said.
Hargrove said conversations with Natural Resources have been fruitless, adding that the agency was using a “bureaucratic excuse” for not reconveying the property.
Tharinger said the agency wants an environmental impact statement before transferring it back.
“That’s probably a $250,000 bill because of the nature of a shooting park in a fairly sensitive landscape,” Tharinger said.
Tharinger and Hargrove were guests of the group also known as 4C to give a legislative update.
The 24th District — Democrat Kevin Van De Wege of Sequim is the district’s third legislator — represents Clallam and Jefferson counties and about half of Grays Harbor County.
Clallam County Auditor Patty Rosand and county Elections Supervisor Shoona Radon also gave an update on election procedures in anticipation of ballots that were mailed out Wednesday for the Aug. 16 primary, which affects Sequim-area residents.
Hargrove said that while Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner were blaming each other for the debt-limit crisis in competing addresses to the nation the very night he and Tharinger were in Sequim, Democrats and Republicans in the state Legislature were actually getting along.
Hargrove spoke of the bipartisan support it took for lawmakers to approve a $32 billion 2012-2013 biennial budget that included $4.6 billion in budget cuts.
“It’s much more pleasurable not to be blame, blame, blame — which tends to be going on back in Congress now — but actually working together in finding a solution,” he said.
Tharinger, also completing his third and final term as District 1 county commissioner, said $18 billion was cut from state spending over the past four years.
He defended the holding of a special session to pass the most recent biennial budget.
With scores of legislators with different views, “it all has to be worked out in a process,” Tharinger said.
“The complexity of the problem and magnitude of the problem is why it took extra time,” he added.
Urges restraint
Jerry Sinn, president of the board of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula — which has units in Sequim and Port Angeles — urged budget restraint.
“We’ve got to contain our costs in some way to keep a balanced budget, do priority items and get done what needs to be done,” he said.
Hargrove, in another jab at Congress, said that while the federal government “can print and borrow endlessly, we have to project what revenue is two years into the future and write a budget.”
Those revenue projections recently have fallen short, he said.
“This is a very unusual recession and not patterned after anything we have data on,” he said.
“We’ll have better data once this is all over.”
During their presentation, Rosand and Radon said the only requirement for proof of U.S. citizenship when people register to vote is that they take an oath that they are citizens.
In addition, she said, voter registration lists are available to the public, and the U.S. Border Patrol has obtained those lists “on several occasions,” Rosand said.
Voting over the Internet is “closed” for the general public, Rosand added.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
