PORT ANGELES — Two Clallam County commissioners already knew the answer to their question.
But Commissioners Jim McEntire and Bill Peach kept their colleague, four-term Commissioner Mike Chapman, in the dark.
McEntire and Peach said last week they already knew the state Auditor’s Office had determined the board acted properly in approving $1.3 million in Opportunity Fund grants that have become a battle line between the commissioners and Treasurer Selinda Barkhuis.
But they said nothing Monday when they joined Chapman, the board’s senior member, in voting unanimously to ask the agency to conduct a special compliance review-audit on the grant awards and warrants that had effectively already been completed.
They asked for an audit that already had been conducted.
Had Chapman had the same knowledge as his fellow commissioners, he would have voted no on the request.
“Why would I ask them to look at something if they had already looked at it,” he said last week.
“That would have been stupid.”
Barkhuis has refused to sign warrants releasing the funds, threatening legal action unless the commissioners hold public hearings and sign contracts with the city and port.
Commissioners will discuss whether to hold a hearing on the city’s award of $285,952 at their Monday work session at 9 a.m. at the county courthouse.
The Opportunity Fund Advisory Board recommended approval of the grant last week and considers a recommendation on the port’s $1 million grant application Thursday.
State Auditor’s Office spokesman Thomas Shapley said state examiners Carol Ehlinger and Alexander Beherndt, who began their overall review of 2014 finances in late June, reviewed the appropriateness of the grant-award process at Barkhuis’s request.
Ehlinger and Beherndt “found no issue with this concern over the warrants,” Shapley said.
McEntire said he had learned about the decision before the Monday meeting “presumably” from Prosecuting Attorney Mark Nichols, and learned about the determination directly from Beherndt on Tuesday.
He also spoke with Doug Cochran, Auditor’s Office chief of staff, the week before about the special audit.
McEntire said he left the conversation believing the agency would soon issue a letter formalizing a decision that the commissioners had done nothing wrong.
That letter would, in effect, be the compliance-review audit that the commissioners asked the Auditor’s Office to conduct.
“If an auditor looks at something and finds something that has gone wrong, they are going to let you know,”
McEntire intentionally did not say anything about what he had learned at Monday’s meeting.
“I really want the commission to be the model of decorum and professional behavior, and something like that, looking back on it, would have been a tales-out-of-school kind of thing,” he said.
“I expect my colleagues to do [their] own due diligence.”
Peach learned about the decision from county Administrator Jim Jones, who said he learned about it from Nichols.
“It was never part of my thinking and decision-making,” he said of not making the decision known.
“I was focused on the future.”
Barkhuis refused in May to sign off on board-approved warrants of $285,952 to the city of Port Angeles for a waterfront improvement project and $1 million for building improvements to the port’s Composite Recycling Technology Center.
“That is the law,” she insisted, a position disputed by Nichols.
“The law is not the state auditor, the law is the attorney general or Superior Court.”
On May 11, a day before commissioners awarded the two grants, Barkhuis threatened to withhold the funds and called for a judicial review of the board’s action.
After Barkhuis took issue with the decisions on her www.patoday.com website, the commissioners rewound the approval process.
On July 11, they voided the warrants and sent the requests back the Opportunity Fund Advisory Board, which had overwhelmingly approved both applications.
That left Chapman believing, he said last week, that hearings were imminent.
“How do you go to the Opportunity Fund board and say, you start over, and we do not have a public hearing?
McEntire, the board chairman who is up for re-election this year, indicated that additional public review was not part of his thinking.
“What I was interested in was a mechanism to stop the interest-rate clock,” he said.
Peach said the county was accruing interest of $413 a day on the unpaid warrants.
Nichols said Thursday there is “nothing preventing the commissioners from holding a hearing.
Chapman said he will vote against granting the Opportunity Fund money if there are no hearings.
“Without a public hearing, you begin to embarrass yourself,” he said.
“The reason we started over was because there was some concern about there not being a public process.
“I support the projects but I cannot continue to support a process that isn’t working.
Peach said he is against scheduling a hearing, saying the Opportunity Fund board already held one.
McEntire would not say whether he does or does not support setting a hearing.
“I am in favor of following the law, and the law in our county policy indicates there is no hearing legally required,” he said.
“I’m not one to go beyond the law or short of the law.”
McEntire would not comment on what the commissioners might do if they re-approve the allocations and Barkhuis continues withholding the funds.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come it,” he said.
The state Attorney General’s Office has already said it will not investigate the appropriations absent a request from Nichols or Gov. Jay Inslee.
“I want to take it to Superior Court,” Barkhuis said last week.
“They are forcing my hand.
“I am doing this because this is the public’s money.”
In an email Friday, Barkhuis, who was elected in 2010 and re-elected in 2014, recalled having her law practice in Clallam County from 1995-2000.
“I could represent myself in court and will do so if need be,” she said.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
