Charter Review Takes On Big Issues at First Meetings

Charter Review Commission graphic to revise County Charter adopted in 2005

Initiative and Referendum staunchly defended; Full-time Council supported

At its weekly meeting at the Orcas Hotel on Jan. 21, the Charter Review Commissioners’ (CRC’s) strong support of the initiative and referendum process, initiated with the Charter form of government in 2005, became the determinant in choosing to support the charter form of county government, rather than the “code” system used prior to 2006.

When it became clear to the group, meeting for the third time, that the code form would not allow for initiative and referendum, it tabled a motion by Orcas Commissioner Ed Sutton, to recommend to the voters that the charter form of government be rescinded.

Sutton’s motion had been criticized by Janice Peterson of San Juan Island for “legitimizing the action by presenting it as a motion.” Sutton said, “I agree that the motion [to rescind the charter] is extreme; if there’s a strong sentiment, we need to know right away.”

Barbara Thomas of Lopez/Shaw said “Initiative and referendum are critical to our decision making; through discussion and clarification, we ought to vote on that intelligently.”

Later in the meeting, Lopez Charter Review Commissioner Madrona Murphy proposed the following motion: “To preserve the powers of initiative, referendum and mini-initiative to the people in the recommendations that we make, other than to recommend repeal of the charter as a whole.”

With the review committee establishing its commitment to the initiative and referendum processes in whatever charter modifications are made, the group voted unanimously to accept Murphy’s motion.Earlier in the meeting, Prosecuting Attorney Randy Gaylord spoke to the 16 CRC  members present regarding the legality of returning to a three-member commission whereby each member resides within a district and is selected at primary and general elections.<

Gaylord also remarked on the “price of the charter” that has concerned several commissioners. He advised caution in measuring the charter’s value only in terms of cost.”It is simplistic to look only at salaries and positions,” he said. The intangible savings through the charter are “difficult to measure” in the face of the costs of slow-moving decisions and delays in in project completion , or of “fractured administration” leading to project cost over-runs.

Former County Commissioner and Councilman Alan Lichter, who served until 2008, spoke to his “on the ground” experience as both a commissioner and a council member. Lichter spoke emphatically in favor of a smaller number of Commissioner/Councilors, saying the Charter Government instituted in 2006 was more expensive, diffuse and inflated, and less transparent and efficient in both policy-making and leadership.

Within a year after the Charter was put in place, “Administrative bodies were multiplying like rabbits with no real leadership,” Lichter said.

Beyond the difficulty of six council members coming to decisions, the effect of the charter was “more subtle,” he said. “Leaders provide strategy, and administrators and managers take care of logistics. With the charter government… leadership at best was very diffuse. Leaders are not part-time; people who run government are full-time.”

The result in San Juan County, said Lichter, is that “full-time workers make the policy.”

Lichter praised County Administrator Pete Rose who “has done an outstanding job in a very difficult task,” but Lichter recalled that often council discussions were “indecisive and interminable” with the issue at hand turned over to the County Administrator to deal with. “The charter hasn’t done us any good whatsoever,” Lichter concluded before taking questions.

Lichter’s assertions were challenged by Janice Peterson,who said that critical decisions made by the current, six-member council, were holdovers from the three-member commission, such as the reserve fund, and Growth Management Act Compliance. Lichter rebutted Peterson’s claims, and added that he favored an administrator even if the council/commission were a three-member body.

Following the presentations by Evans, Gaylord and Lichter, the committee heard sub-committee reports on partisan vs. non-partisan elections, whether a county administrator should be appointed or elected,  as well as the discussion preserving initiative and referendum, as they related to rescinding the charter and returning to county government by code.

Maureen See of San Juan Island made another motion to study the options available in the initiative and referendum process, in order that people would make better use of these electoral tools. She noted that in the last six years, there have been only three such measures. Madrona Murphy, Jim Stegall and Maureen See volunteered to serve on such a committee.

Orcas East County Council Member Patty Miller requested that the minutes of the review group include more discussion, so that the public could better follow the work of the committee. Bob Gamble of Orcas agreed that knowing the reasoning behind the votes would be important when the drafting committee makes the CRC’s findings and formal recommendations. (Documents available to the CRC, agendas and minutes of the meetings are posted on the county website at https://sanjuanco.com/CRC/).

Larry Hendel of Lopez Island moved to recommend that three county council/commission members serve full-time with commensurate pay. Much of the ensuing discussion suggested splitting the motion, as the issue of “commensurate pay” was a separate matter. Moana Kutsche of Orcas said research on the issue was needed, in part because sharing executive and legislative duties hadn’t “been ironed out.”

The motion failed by a close vote with two abstentions.

Madrona Murphy then made the motion to “Remove all reference to a separate executive branch from the Charter and return executive and administrative responsibilities to elected commissioners/council members, thus empowering them to delegate duties to subordinate officers or county employees, without relieving them of their executive and administrative accountability.”

In explaining her motion, Murphy said, the idea is not to remove the administrator, but to put the authority for him (or her) back on the elected officials.