PORT TOWNSEND — After sifting through hundreds of e-mails, Ron Gregory is convinced he has found evidence that Jefferson County Administrator Philip Morley broke the law by advocating passage of a sales tax hike in November.
Morley said he provided information, not advocacy, as he made presentations to business and other groups in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 2 election when Jefferson County voters approved a 0.3 percent increase to support county and city of Port Townsend programs.
Gregory has cited state law that prohibits elected officials and government employees from assisting a campaign for a candidate or a ballot measure through “the use of any of the facilities of a public office or agency, directly or indirectly.”
“I have what I believe to be a ‘smoking gun,’ proof that Mr. Morley violated the law,” Gregory said last week. “I will be sending this information to the Public Disclosure Commission.”
Gregory plans to send to the state an article that Morley wrote for the October issue of the Port Ludlow Voice, which describes in detail the programs that would have been discontinued if Proposition 1 on the November ballot was not approved and correspondence between Morley and the Voice Editor Beverly Browne.
“I don’t remember the article exactly as I wrote it, but it did not cross the line,” Morley said.
“It is up to Mr. Gregory to cite where the article crossed over into advocacy rather than informing the public.”
Gregory plans to submit to the state an analysis by Tom Thiersch, a Jefferson County open government advocate and a frequent critic of the three Jefferson County commissioners.
Points to e-mails
Thiersch points to e-mails in which Morley asked Brown about sending her an article, and she accepted the offer.
Thiersch says in a letter to Gregory that the e-mails show that Morley initiated the process of publishing the article in the Voice.
“I think this is key because the RCW [Revised Code of Washington] only permits him to prepare a ‘response to a specific inquiry,'” Thiersch wrote.
Morley said he “does not recall” whether he initiated the Voice article.
Thiersch also wrote that Morley’s outline of services to be cut if the sales tax measure did not pass constituted speculation instead of a presentation of facts, as required by law.
“Only the BoCC [Board of County Commissioners] has the legal authority to set actual budget amounts. . . . Until the BoCC actually votes to approve the annual budget resolution, and/or any budget extensions by resolution, nothing is ‘factual,'” Thiersch wrote.
Said Morley: “Before the election, our budget was based on what we would have if Proposition 1 did not pass. We only added in Proposition 1 revenue after the election.
“These numbers were what we were working with and were not speculation,” he said.
In October, Thiersch said he planned to vote for the sales tax hike but did not like how the measure was developed.
“They have told us that by passing the tax increase, these programs will be funded,” he said then. “That means they have already made some decisions about the budget without a proper hearing.”
County Commissioner David Sullivan disagreed then with Thierch’s interpretation, saying that final determination would be in December after public hearings.
However, Sullivan said then, “If the measure passes, we are honor-bound to fund these programs.”
Complaint filed Oct. 30
Gregory filed a complaint against Morley with the PDC on Oct. 30 that accused the county administrator of campaigning for the measure, which raised the sales tax rate to 8.7 percent, effective in April.
A similar measure passed in Tuesday’s election to benefit Jefferson Transit will raise the sale tax rate again, to 9 percent.
On Nov. 2, Gregory — who is the Jefferson County Republican chairman but who said he acted as an individual — told the state commission that he did not want his complaint investigated until he had received results from an information request he made to the county.
Gregory asked for all e-mails sent or received by any county employee that made reference to Proposition 1 — all 8,485 of them.
Information requests are completed when the employees have time available.
Gregory received about 600 e-mails in early January and since has received another batch.
During the two months leading up to the November election, Morley appeared at about a dozen public events where he spoke about the measure but said that he was careful to not take a stand.
Instead, he said, he only provided information as to what would happen if the measure was passed or defeated, and which programs would be cut or subsidized in those cases.
Gregory said it took him several days to go through all of the e-mails supplied by the county, as he had to inspect them one at a time.
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
