— from Cindy Wolf —

Last Tuesday [Feb. 5] our representatives threw away a golden chance. The San Juan County Council voted unanimously to appoint a State Senator who was not their constituents’ first choice nor the local Democratic party’s first choice. Those votes tipped the balance for Liz Lovelett.

I congratulate Councilor Lovelett and wish her the best of luck. She certainly seems to be a capable person. She will not be the strategic and dynamic advocate Kris Lytton could have been. Unfortunately, the way the final vote was made has sparked concern that the Open Meetings Act was violated by a number of councilors. Because our county councilmen were the deciding votes, we will need to take this very seriously.

Lovelett seems to have her policy priorities pretty straight for a
pro-refineries (she has to think about the jobs base in Anacortes)
politician. Unfortunately she has neither power nor influence in Olympia
and not much time left in the session. She was not a good appointment
choice for San Juan County and she herself would have been better off
building a base and getting elected to the position.

At the 40th Legislative District Democratic Precinct Committee Officers
meeting February 2, Kris Lytton was voted first on a mandatory list of
three names. Of 46 votes cast 29 went to her, 16 to Lovelett and one to
Trevor Smith.

What was the motivation for this?  Why would our County Council turn on a staunch advocate with eight years of experience?  Since the answers have been spurious, I am left to piece together the story.  It starts 32 years ago when the Attorney General of Washington opined that even in a legislative district composed of multiple counties, county council members were not allowed to stand for the appointments to vacant legislative seats they ultimately get to vote on, unless they resigned before the selection process began with no expectation of appointment. This makes a certain amount of sense because the combined council’s vote is public and there is obviously a great deal of pressure to vote for a colleague you must continue to run a county with, whether they win or lose.

Also, it is legal to double-dip in this state. You can hold two offices simultaneously, which Jamie [Stephens] expressed to me he thought he might do if appointed. Having the same person paid to do two simultaneous jobs as a public representative is, perhaps, permission that ought to be granted in a public election, not by an appointment of one’s peers.

Based on the Attorney General’s opinion, the state party told Jamie
Stephens and Whatcom County Commissioner Rud Browne they couldn’t stand for the appointment to Kevin Ranker’s senate seat. To do otherwise would have opened the validity of the appointment to a court challenge in which the AG’s opinion is given great weight. At that point, the counsels for each county or a state legislator were the only ones with standing to
question the AG’s opinion. It is my understanding from the AG’s website Jeff Morris, who has complained publicly but not officially about the opinion, could have submitted the question on behalf of the 40th Legislative District appointment process.

Commissioner Browne then requested the counsel for Whatcom County to
challenge the AG’s opinion. Council refused on the grounds that since the challenge only affected Browne, it could be understood as a gift of public funds to an individual.  The matter was brought to the attention of the Washington State Association of Councils, the Director of which commissioned a private law firm to review the Attorney General’s opinion.  The WSAC is a non-profit funded 50% by dues from member counties (public funds) and 50% by commissions from projects it is retained to complete.  It is unclear whether public funds were spent on this review, but Rud Browne denies having commissioned it and Jamie Stephens has said nothing, so unless the Public Records Requesta (PRR) show differently, we must assume they were.

The opinion of that law firm, Pacifica Law Group,  differed with the Attorney General opinion, but since it had no standing, would still have left the appointment open to legal challenge.   With the precinct committee offers selection process looming in the near future, Washington State Democratic Central Committee (WSDCC) gave the Councils 24 hrs to produce counsel opinions on what grounds the AGO should be challenged.  Since Whatcom had already refused to produce such an opinion, the deadline was, predictably, not met.

Because there was no solid legal backing for disregarding the opinion of the Attorney General, the WSDCC made the decision to keep its ruling in place.

Aside from the complete disregard for constituent preferences, for recommendation by the PCOs and for the wisdom of choosing a powerful ally demonstrated by all three [San Juan County] councilmen, there are several other things that need to be called out:

Rick Hughes and Jamie Stephens both told the story to different people that Kris Lytton somehow knew Kevin Ranker was in trouble and would be forced to resign, so she stepped down to let Debra Lekanoff run and kept money in her campaign coffers planning to “come to the rescue” when Kevin Ranker got in trouble. Bear in mind that Kris announced her retirement in February 2018 and Debra Lekanoff declared in March (ish?) 2018. The rules allowing for the complaint were not in place until July 2018 and [complainant] Ann Larson did not even begin to consider lodging the complaint until after the Kavanaugh hearing.

During the comments section of the agenda at the Combined County Council Meeting, Rick and Jamie both cited Lytton’s vote on Public Records
Disclosure as a reason to doubt her commitment to transparency.  Rick, at
least, knew straight from Lytton that she would not vote for the [Public Records Request (PRR) Disclosure] bill because it was not thought through.  She had recently had a constituent seek help from her office after being raped.

The constituent was afraid to go straight to the police because there were citizenship issues in her family. The new law would have compelled Lytton to release all of that constituent’s information to anyone making a PRR, even a convicted criminal or someone wishing to hand the information over to ICE. Lytton’s record also shows that she championed financial disclosure. Because Rick knew this story, [his] willingness to throw this particular mud ball leaves more dirt on him.

Rick and Jamie told a few people that they suspected Kris of calling
Learner [Limbach] and talking him into withdrawing from the race by promising to support him in a future County Council run. They predicated this on knowing that the date Kris and Learner talked was just before his
announcement of withdrawal. Learner emailed me about that call, which he initiated, the day after it happened. It was a courtesy call in which he informed Lytton of his intention to withdraw his name. They discussed
Learner’s policy issue concerns and Kris was impressed with his knowledge and asked to keep in touch for agricultural policy and food security advice.

Bill Watson expressed irritation that the Democratic Party expressed a preference for one of the three candidates and took it into his head that he was choosing a Senator for the future. Dicey logic considering his remit was to choose a Senator for the session and Rud Browne will likely make a well-financed run at the seat in November. I guess he showed the grassroots party they are not the boss of him.

Jamie Stephens was incensed at having to follow rules which denied him a shot at the appointment.  He wanted a chance to swat back at the WSDCC and excuses to disrespect Kris Lytton because he had decided the AGO was brought to light to thwart her strong opponents and otherwise no one would have objected.  The problem with this thinking is he would have had to get past the PCOs, as would Browne, and most were disinclined to put sitting Councilors on the list precisely because it represents undue influence.

Rick Hughes went along for the ride because it gave him a great platform to perform the role of independent moral thinker, practice his small “r”
republican philosophy of government with disregard for post-election public input, and deny power to a person he had decided was out to get
him.

A thoroughly fulfilled PRR ought to go some way towards painting a more
complete picture of what looks from here like a lot of egging-on, but even
the publicly available facts show yet another facet of our political culture in this County and this [Legislative District] LD in a damning light.

Our tiny part of the world keeps ending up in the Big City papers for all the wrong reasons. We lost a State Senator to scandal, and now we have
Representative Morris under review, our Sheriff being investigated, and
our County Council acting erratic enough to arouse the suspicions of good
people all over the legislative district. Is it really so aggravating to follow the rules?

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