PORT ANGELES — Clallam County commissioners have voted 2-1 to ask a judge to settle a dispute with the elected treasurer over the process by which the board approved a pair of infrastructure grants this summer.
Commissioners Jim McEntire and Bill Peach voted Tuesday to direct Prosecuting Attorney Mark Nichols to seek a declaratory judgement and order from a Superior Court judge that county Treasurer Selinda Barkhuis should issue the warrants for $1.3 million in Opportunity Fund grants to the port and city of Port Angeles.
Mike Chapman was adamantly opposed to his fellow commissioners taking their feud with the treasurer to court.
‘Emphatically no’
“On behalf of the citizens of Clallam County who do not want elected officials suing other elected officials or taking court action against their representative, I will proudly and loudly vote emphatically no,” said Chapman, the board’s senior member.
“This is one of the worst actions that this board has ever taken.”
McEntire repeated during the meeting that the board is not suing the treasurer.
Rather, commissioners are asking a judge to determine “whether or not the process that we have followed is both legal and whether we followed it properly, and then to explain the duties of us all,” McEntire said.
Nichols said he will ask the judge to address the “rights, obligations and responsibilities” of the commissioners, Barkhuis and county Auditor Shoona Riggs.
Barkhuis this summer refused to process board-approved warrants for the grants because of a lack of public hearings for debatable budget emergencies and signed contracts with port and city governments.
McEntire and Peach contend that the board followed county policy and state law when it approved the grants, a position supported by Nichols and the state Auditor’s Office.
An executive session that was scheduled on the matter was canceled Tuesday because Chapman had refused to attend out of protest.
Instead, the full board discussed the warrants and its next course of action in a 2½-hour-long meeting in open session.
“I think the record shows that we, this board, have offered olive branch after olive branch and conciliation after conciliation, and none of that has been responded to in a positive way,” McEntire said of the three-month-long dispute with Barkhuis.
“I don’t think any fair-minded person could say that we haven’t tried.”
Commissioners are obligated to follow county policy and should not kowtow to Barkhuis’ demand for debatable budget emergency hearings and written contracts because of the precedent it would set for other counties, McEntire said.
Chapman countered that a budget emergency hearing would ensure that the port and city of Port Angeles would receive their grants in about three weeks.
Another safe option would be to budget the $1 million grant to the port and $285,952 grant to the city in 2016, Chapman said.
“Go ahead,” Chapman told his colleagues. “Go to court. Be the first two commissioners to take an elected official to court and be proud of it.
“Tell the world how proud you are that you’re taking an elected official to court and not working with them.”
“I’m not proud of it, Mike,” McEntire replied.
“I’m very sad that it has come to this.”
Not person, but function
“I disagree with Mike Chapman’s characterization that we’re taking any person or anybody to court,” McEntire said after the meeting.
“We’re taking the function of local government to court because local government just isn’t working the way it needs to work in this particular case.”
In an email Tuesday to the Peninsula Daily News, Barkhuis said it was a “tremendous insult” to county taxpayers that McEntire and Peach would not “take responsibility and accountability for the very documents that the [state] Attorney General is referring to when he states on his website: ‘Our open government laws exist to promote democracy and open up government for all citizens.’”
“Not only do citizens have a right to know how their government is spending their tax dollars and exercising the powers the people gave to them, the public has a need to know,” state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said on a website provided by Barkhuis.
Jefferson County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney David Alvarez has been appointed to represent Barkhuis in the matter.
Nichols said he would work with Alvarez to “keep this process working as quickly as we can.”
He said a declaratory judgment could be issued in as soon as four to six weeks or as long as several months, depending on the availability of a judge.
Nichols told commissioners that a judge from outside Clallam County may need to hear the case because of potential conflicts of interest.
Taxpayers rights
“What’s at stake is none other than Clallam County taxpayer rights to budget transparency (public budgeting processes according to Chapter 36.40 RCW) and government accountability (properly vetted and signed contracts according to County Policy 560),” Barkhuis wrote.
“What’s the point of having any of these laws if they magically start including exemptions for $1 million no-strings-attached election year grants?”
Barkhuis, a non-practicing attorney, said she is seeking the assistance of pro bono lawyers to help her and Alvarez prepare to “defend against this serious insult on this seriously important and utterly nonpartisan right.
“I think it is a very sad day for Clallam County,” Barkhuis concluded.
Nichols advised the commissioners that a declaratory judgment was just one option for the board to consider.
“It tends to reduce adversarialness, which I think would be helpful,” Nichols said.
“I always believe that focusing on the issue is preferable to focusing on a few people or personalities.”
After Barkhuis rejected the warrants, commissioners held a public hearing to re-authorize the grants from the sales-tax-supported Opportunity Fund.
The warrants themselves have not been re-authorized.
“This sends a chill up and down my spine to know that we have an elected official that gives no respect for the law and for policy,” Peach said at the meeting Tuesday.
“I do appreciate the fact that we’ve got a prosecuting attorney that wants to address just the issue of the law, not the behavior.”
Said McEntire: “I am very interested in having this remain a question of law and not necessarily of behavior.”
“I am completely uninterested in suing a person,” he added.
Chapman predicted a “long, drawn-out, protracted, career-ending, potentially, action that you guys took today.”
Responded McEntire: “Those are your views.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
