PORT TOWNSEND — Just two days before his appeal hearing in Kitsap County Superior Court, Joe D’Amico has unleased a barrage of accusations against Jefferson County officials — particularly the county administrator.
He said Monday that he is fighting for his company’s survival.
The Security Services Northwest president, who has been locked in a yearlong battle with Jefferson County over the county’s shutdown of his Discovery Bay-area gun ranges and homeland security training operation, said he hired a private investigator to dig into his opponents’ pasts.
That Seattle investigator, Leigh Hearon, says she has found evidence that Jefferson County officials, including County Administrator John Fischbach, inappropriately contacted county hearing examiner Irv Berteig, who last year ruled against the company’s Discovery Bay complex.
“SSNW [Security Services Northwest] has learned that [Berteig and Fischbach] scheduled appointments to discuss SSNW prior to the SSNW hearing, after the hearing but prior to the decision, and following the decision Jan. 11, 2006,” D’Amico said in a prepared statement, which he released Monday at a news conference in a green canvas tent at Fort Discovery Training Center.
Fischbach denied the accusation, calling it “absolutely a lie.”
Wednesday hearing
Security Services is tentatively scheduled on Wednesday to go before Kitsap County Superior Court Judge Jay B. Roof in Port Orchard for its appeal hearing on Berteig’s decision.
The facility, which, among other projects, trained U.S. Department of Defense employees in shooting and counter-assault tactics, has been closed since shortly after the county issued a stop-work order last summer.
The county said several structures at the training center lacked proper county building permits.
D’Amico, who has admitted he made a mistake by not obtaining those permits, said county officials refused to work with him to move his shooting ranges two miles south, into the Olympic Mountains.
He also contended that state and county laws allow shooting at the training center, but county officials, who received calls from Discovery Bay-area a residents about gunfire noise, refused to allow it.
At the heart of the legal rumble is the company’s argument that it is a nonconforming county land use D’Amico established in 1988 on about 20 acres of the 3,700-acre Gunstone family timber and shellfish property.
The land runs along Discovery Bay’s western shores and into the Olympic foothills.
Security Services operates in a rural-residential zone the county established after the company went into business.
‘Absolutely a lie’
D’Amico said the alleged meetings between Fischbach and Berteig were noted in Fischbach’s electronic day-timer, which his investigator found through a Freedom of Information Act request to the county.
“That’s absolutely a lie,” Fischbach said, responding to D’Amico’s accusation.
“I can guarantee you that that’s a lie. I don’t recall what those meetings were about. but I can guarantee that Irv Berteig is a man of irreversible honor.
“Even if we did, what does this have to do with what he is accused of?” Fischbach said of D’Amico, who has also alleged that Berteig sent a Jan. 10 e-mail to “his boss,” Fischbach, informing him that he had reached a decision “before making his decision known to the interested parties” — Jefferson County attorney Mark Johnsen and Security Services attorney, Glenn Amster.
Again, Fischbach vehemently denied the accusation.
“I’m getting angry and I am going to contact an attorney,” the county administrator for more than two years said.
“This is the first time that somebody has tried to slander me in such a concerted way.”
