PORT ANGELES — Port Angeles City Council members have discarded most of a broadly worded, 5-year-old law that residents on both sides of the water fluoridation issue wielded to target all seven council members with ethics violations in 2016, all but one of which were dropped by the complainant or found invalid by an ethics board.
On the advice of the city’s insurance carrier, council members unanimously voted Tuesday to throw out the bulk of the existing code of ethical conduct for city public officials, approved in 2012 and which has cost the city $20,000 in legal fees.
They agreed to replace it with state law that focuses on conflicts of interest and use of public office for personal gain, which was in place before the 2012 municipal law was approved.
They will consider it for approval at their next meeting June 6 after city staff prepares the wording.
The existing code focuses on egregious behavior.
Complaints are reviewed by three-person volunteer ethics boards drawn from nine people who are chosen by council members.
“We’ve wasted their time,” Councilman Brad Collins said at the meeting Tuesday.
Using state law to replace the existing law was Option 1 of four options presented by City Manager Dan McKeen in a memo he prepared for the meeting Tuesday.
“There’s a growing consensus that we need to get back to Option 1,” Collins said.
Other options McKeen presented included keeping the existing ordinance but removing “general standards of conduct.”
Deputy Mayor Cherie Kidd, the only council member found by an ethics board to have violated the code and who was a supporter when it was approved in 2012, said Tuesday she agreed with Collins.
She noted that ethics board member Ken Williams, a retired Clallam County Superior Court judge, also had recommended reverting to state law.
Williams, one of four board members whose opinions McKeen had sought on changing the code, had said other cities’ experiences with state law would provide precedents for Port Angeles officials when they process complaints, McKeen said in his memo.
“The purpose of the state statute is to create statewide uniform law,” Kidd said, echoing Williams.
The existing city code’s “general standards of conduct” under Section J formed the basis of four ethics complaints citizens filed against council members between February and May 2016.
They were filed by fluoridation opponents including the group Our Water, Our Choice! and resident Marolee Smith, and fluoridation proponent Marie Wiggins.
Fluoridation of city water was halted in August. An advisory vote on the issue is set for the Nov. 7 general election ballot.
Section J outlaws “abusive conduct,” “verbal attacks,” “acts that demean, harass, or intimidate another person” and says that “public officials shall not engage in any conduct or activities that reflect discredit on the public officials, tend to bring the city into disrepute, or impair its efficient and effective operation.”
A three-person ethics board found that Kidd had “tended to bring the city into disrepute” and “reflected discredit on the City Council and upon herself as a public official.”
The panel determined she violated the code when she abruptly adjourned a Feb. 2 meeting during a public comment session at which pro-fluoridation council members were undergoing severe criticism.
The city council on Oct. 4 rejected an ethics board recommendation that Kidd be verbally admonished in favor of a general statement pledging that the council will follow the state Open Public Meetings Act.
McKeen said in his memo that the $20,000 in legal fees did not include “unspecified city staff costs.”
“In general, the broader and less objective the standards we apply, the higher the funding liability,” McKeen said in his memo.
“Council agreed that, once the complaint processes were complete, Council would review how the process worked and, if appropriate, make adjustments to the ordinance.”
The council approved the code in 2012 in response to what council members said was their inability under the existing law to process two complaints against then-City Councilman Max Mania.
They were filed by former Clallam County Democratic Party Vice Chair Jack Slowriver and then-City Councilwoman Brooke Nelson.
Nelson had accused Mania of attempting to undermine the council’s position on Nippon Paper Industries USA’s biomass cogeneration plant in correspondence to project opponents.
Slowriver said Mania had acted unethically toward her for not supporting the Democratic Party candidacy of Mania’s wife, Dale Holiday, for Clallam County commissioner, and that Mania upbraided Slowriver with foul language.
The soon-to-be-discarded ethics code is at http://tinyurl.com/PDN-EthicsCode.
The state law on which the city’s new ethics code will be based is at http://tinyurl.com/PDN-StateCode.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
