PORT ANGELES — Clallam County has renewed an agreement with a Portland, Ore., law firm and one of its attorneys to provide legal representation in collective bargaining and employment-related matters.
Commissioners Jim McEntire and Bill Peach voted Tuesday to approve the one-year agreement with Bullard Smith Jernstedt Wilson, P.C.
Commissioner Mike Chapman was on an excused absence.
Chapman on Monday questioned the value county taxpayers were getting from the firm known as Bullard Law.
“I don’t feel like I’m being represented by this group,” Chapman said in a board work session.
“I feel like they’re way too cozy with labor. The contracts are tilted toward labor. We continue to lose arbitration hearings and routinely have to make hundreds of thousands [in payments] that go to labor.”
Clallam County will continue to pay labor attorney Akin Blitz $345 per hour under the terms of the new personal services agreement.
Previous agreements with Bullard Law were four years in length.
The one-year pact was recommended by Prosecuting Attorney Mark Nichols, Human Resources Director Rich Sill and County Administrator Jim Jones.
“We are going to explore different alternatives,” Jones said.
Violation
Teamsters Local No. 589 representative Dan Taylor testified Tuesday that an independent arbiter ruled May 27 that the county violated collective bargaining agreements by reducing employee hours to 37.5 per week from 40 per week in January 2014 and ’15.
Commissioners have since restored the workweek for union employees to 40 hours.
The arbiter ordered the county to pay full back-pay with interest, Taylor said.
Clallam County is challenging the arbiter’s ruling in court, Jones said.
“People didn’t work the hours, and now we’re going to be forced to give them hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Chapman said.
“How is that not a gift of public funds? How about just saying, ‘No, we’re not going to do that’? How about just drawing a line in the sand?
“I can’t give a used computer to the school district under the gift of public funds,” Chapman added.
“But you can write hundreds of thousands of dollars of checks to employees for work they didn’t do. On behalf of the taxpayer, someday, somebody needs to be held accountable.”
Clallam County hired Bullard Law for labor representation about 25 years ago.
“We’re not commenting on any particular assignment or work they have done for the county,” Nichols said.
“I just think that it’s an appropriate time to revisit whether or not the service that we’re receiving is, No. 1, the best that it can be under the circumstances given the makeup and constitution of the county, the evolution of Washington state law and some of the issues that are presenting.
“So instead of entering into a four-year contract, we figure a one-year would be a more appropriate vehicle at this point in time,” Nichols said.
McEntire said he would support a “full and open reappraisal of the relationship” with the Portland firm.
“There’s a lot of value to having pretty stable relationship in a case like this, and that’s for sure,” McEntire said.
“But nobody ought to feel like they’ve got a deal in perpetuity.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
