To the County Council: Mr. Forlenza, Mr. Hughes, Mr. Jarman, Ms. Miller, Mr. Peterson, and Mr. Stephens:
I am writing to object in the strongest possible terms to the San Juan County Council’s appointment on 1/29/13 of Tim Blanchard to the San Juan County Planning Commission. I believe your appointment of Mr. Blanchard was negligent, irresponsible, unethical, and an insult to the citizens of our County. It may also have been illegal. It clearly demonstrated a lack on the Council’s part of transparency, balance, fairness, and non-partisanship.
Full disclosure: My wife Susan Dehlendorf is on the Planning Commission. Susan was not involved in drafting, reviewing, or editing this email. In fact, she has not even read it, nor heard it read by me. This email is entirely my work.
When you appointed Mr. Blanchard, you knew full well that he is a board member and legal advisor to the Common Sense Alliance, a partisan, special-interest advocacy group. You also knew at the time that Mr. Blanchard was expected to be, now proven as fact with the passage of time (one week), involved in a lawsuit against the County by the CSA. You also knew that there were already two other board members of the CSA on the PC, namely Mike Carlson and John Lackey, and that there were no representatives of Friends of the San Juans on the PC or of any other organization representing an opposing view on the most important matters (CAO, code enforcement, and SMP) expected to come before the PC in 2013 and beyond. The result is a stacked deck of 3 to 0.
Several of you ran for office in 2012, and are now running in this year’s elections for the new three-member council. In so doing, your campaigns frequently speak of transparency, balance, fairness, and non-partisanship. But whether you say so or not in your campaigns, sitting members of the Council are expected to represent all members of the County in a transparent, balanced, fair, and non-partisan manner. However, your action in appointing Mr. Blanchard shows that these words are hollow to you. There was no widespread public notice of the pending appointment, giving the appearance of an inside job. Balance, fairness, and non-partisanship were not even considered. You didn’t even discuss the merits and potential conflict of interest in Mr. Blanchard’s application before you voted. In fact, you did not hold any discussion at all!
You are probably thinking in response that the County followed its standard procedures in advertising for applicants for the open position, with Mr. Blanchard being the only respondent. This might be true for any routine appointment. But this was not a routine appointment for many reasons cited above and below. Moreover, you knew full well that the PC was at the focal point of the current divisiveness in our community over the CAO and SMP, with the concomitant obligation of the Council to proceed with greater openness and fairness than its standard procedures require. Instead, only a handful of insiders knew of the vacancy. Several sitting members of the PC were not even aware of the vacancy, call for applicants, and the application by Mr. Blanchard. \ Moreover, the agenda for the Council meeting on 1/29/13 did not even mention the subject of the pending appointment. Given the nature of this appointment, there should have been more extensive public notice and a call for public comment, let alone public discussion by the Councilmembers themselves. And the agenda should have been specific to the vote at hand.
I also believe that Mr. Blanchard’s application dated 12/17/12 did not fully and properly disclose the CSA’s mission, nor his full role with the organization. The County’s standard application contains a section entitled Conflict of Interest, which states in the County’s words “It is crucial to have a BALANCED citizen advisory committee with all stakeholders and community viewpoints represented. TO AVOID ANY POTENTIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST OR QUESTIONS ABOUT THE THE APPEARANCE OF FAIRNESS, please list each organization which you serve in a decision making capacity, your position, and its mission. (All capitalizations are mine.)
Although Mr. Blanchard stated his role with the CSA as “vice president”, he failed to mention he is also a board member, that he has served until recently as the CSA’s principal attorney, and that in that role, he has given the CSA legal advice which, at the time of his application, was being used to prepare a lawsuit against the County in coordination with a big city law firm in Seattle. In fact, on 2/4/13, the CSA filed three lawsuits against the County. Mr. Blanchard’s role in preparing these lawsuits needed to be disclosed and discussed. Again, the Council did not even bring up the subject of balance and fairness. So why are they even mentioned on the application? If there was ever a need for this discussion, this was it.
Mr. Blanchard also misrepresented the mission of the CSA in his application by saying only that it is involved in “education and public comment re land use …”.. What he failed to say is that it is also the CSA’s mission to go well beyond the roll of education and public comment by filing lawsuits when it is in its best interest to do so, as evidenced by the three lawsuits it filed on 2/4/13 against the County he was applying to serve. Although these lawsuits were filed after Mr. Blanchard’s application and appointment, he is believed to have been intimately involved in their preparation.
The argument will probably be made that Mr. Blanchard was the only applicant for the position he has been appointed to. But just because he was the only applicant did not require the Council to vote on his application. You should instead have delayed a decision to a later date to give time to identify other applicants, publicize the applications, solicit public comment, and conduct public discussion, all in the interest of transparency, balance, fairness, and non-partisanship.
I urge you to rectify this situation by removing Mr. Blanchard from the Planning Commission and searching on Orcas Island for new applicants who are not on the board of the CSA, Friends of the San Juans, or any other special-interest group, and who is also not a party to a lawsuit against the County.
A more comprehensive solution to this problem, as well as to similar problems with other citizens committees, would be for the Council to pass an ordinance/regulation, or amend an existing one, that automatically disqualifies from consideration an applicant to any and all citizen committees if he/she has a role, as defined, in an existing lawsuit outstanding against the County, no matter what the issue. This ordinance would also state that if any sitting member of a citizen committee becomes party to a lawsuit against the County while in office, he/she would automatically be removed from his/her position. What greater conflict of interest could there be than for a citizen to serve on a committee that requires him/her to act in the best interests of all of the citizens of the County, while at the same time involved in a lawsuit against the County? This ordinance should be applied retroactively to all sitting committee members, with no grandfathering allowed.
Thank you for listening. I am hopeful you will respond in a manner that is in the best interests of all members of our County.
David Dehlendorf
San Juan Island
David Dehlendorf is a Democratic Precinct Officers
Tim has already responded to the material misstatements in Mr. Dehlendorf’s latest blast. I write simply to question whether Mr. Dehlendorf learned “new math” as a child. B. Dehlendorf, S. Adams and R. Gamble, all Planning Commissioners, are also members of the Friends of the San Juans, or at least are shown as such in the most recent public listing of Friends’ members. (The Friends filed the same administrative appeal “against the County” several days before CSA filed its.) Therefore, if we are keeping count, the “stacked deck” of which Mr. Dehlendorf complains is actually 3-3-3. Moreover, if one accepts Mr. Dehlendorf’s proposition that citizens who are members of an organization that sues the County are precluded from service on County Boards and Commissions, then the Planning Commission, the MRC, the ARC, and the Stewardship Network will all soon be looking for members.
Apparently Ms. Manning, who is Mr. Blanchard’s wife or significant other, does not understand, or chooses not to understand, the concept of equivalency. There is no equivalency between being a donor to an organization such as Friends and being a board member of any organization, particularly one that has sued the county over an issue (CAO) that had been before the PC and is the subject of a lawsuit which Mr. Blanchard has been involved in preparing, and one that is expected to oppose the SMP at every step of the way when it goes before the PC later this year. But we can agree on one thing, Friends board members should not be on the PC. The hypocrisy of the CSA and its supporters is manifest, unless of course they would not object to a Friends board or staff member being appointed to the PC.
There is no law on the books in Washington State, or San Juan County, that requires appointees to Boards, Committees, etc be free of interests that may be in conflict with the appointment. I sit on a board and have had to step aside more than once on deliberations on issues in which I had a personal involvement. The County does ask that you reveal things that might put you in conflict with your duties as an appointee but even if you hide, or forget, items of potential conflict, the mere fact you have them is not a disqualification from appointment. If you need an example, it is not illegal for The Lodging Tax Advisory Committee to let the contract for services for destination marketing to a non profit organization whose president and board member is also a member of The Lodging Tax Advisory Committee. What is illegal is how that conflict is used like for personal gain, undo influence, threats etc. In my example the person involved did correctly step aside both during discussions and decision.
Tim Blanchard’s appointment to the Planning Commission is maybe unfortunate but not illegal. I understand he was the only applicant so the appointment, even though unfortunate, was a no brainer for The Council and in reality significantly weakens the work of the Planning Commission. Blanchard cannot take part in the discussions involving any thing he is or has been a party to, except as a member of the public, and may not vote on matters in which he is or may be in conflict. These discussions put Blanchard on notice that he may not use his position in CSA to influence actions in The Planning Commission, but I would guess he already knows that.
As an afterthought, Peg Manning is right. If we had such a law, the pitiful number of people available to sit on appointed Boards and Committees now, would result in even more positions left unfilled than there is now.
Charlie Binford
Deer Harbor