The Clark County council, absent one of its members, held an unscheduled meeting behind closed doors Wednesday without announcing it beforehand.
Councilors David Madore and Tom Mielke, Acting County Manager Mark McCauley and county legal staff met in executive session to discuss prior litigation before its weekly board time session. Councilor Jeanne Stewart took the day off for personal reasons.
But at no point prior to the executive session was the meeting or its purpose announced. The Open Public Meetings Act requires the chair of the board — in this case, Madore — to announce the purpose of an executive session and when it will end prior to the beginning of the meeting.
RCW 42.30.110 reads that prior to meeting in executive session, the “presiding officer of a governing body shall publicly announce the purpose for excluding the public from the meeting place, and the time when the executive session will be concluded. The executive session may be extended to a stated later time by announcement of the presiding officer.”
Eric Stahl, media and intellectual property lawyer with the firm Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle, called the county’s handling of the meeting “problematic.”
“It doesn’t seem to fit with the spirit of the public meetings law,” he said.
Stahl’s clients include The Columbian and other media organizations.
McCauley called the meeting “kind of a discombobulated thing.” Shortly before 1:30 p.m., Madore, McCauley and county legal staff were meeting behind closed doors in a county conference room. At about 1:30 p.m., Mielke arrived and entered the conference room, shutting the door behind him. At 1:50 p.m., the council closed executive session and opened its regular board time meeting.
There are no laws governing how long before an executive session the board must make an announcement—an announcement can be made immediately prior to the meeting, for example. It is unusual, however, for the county council to hold an executive session without announcing it several days in advance. Typically, executive sessions are included on the councilors’ weekly schedule on Clark County’s website.
County staff also appeared unaware of the unscheduled executive session. Several hours prior to the meeting, a Columbian reporter was speaking with a county employee on an unrelated matter, and asked if there would be an executive session prior to board time. After consulting with another staff member, that employee told The Columbian there wouldn’t be one.
McCauley admitted that the handling of the meeting was not “textbook correct.”
“(When Mielke arrived) I should have said, ‘We’ve just begun executive session,’ ” McCauley said. “I failed to do that.”
Charter amendment
During its previously scheduled board time meeting, the Clark County council took a small step toward possibly amending the home-rule charter.
Madore proposed an amendment last week that would require that any time the county wants to raise its property tax levy by more than 1 percent, the public would have to vote to approve the tax increase.
But whether Madore makes a proposal or not, the current three-person council is powerless to amend the charter. Charter amendments must be approved by four of the eventual five councilors — two new councilors will be elected in November — and then must be approved by the public through a majority vote.
That didn’t stop the council from adding a discussion on a resolution regarding the proposal to its weekly meeting agenda on Sept. 1. That resolution, if passed, will prompt a public hearing sometime next year to discuss an ordinance that would send the proposed amendment to the voters in November 2016.
Last week, all four candidates for county council chair and District 2 were lukewarm to the proposal, saying the council should wait until the full board is seated before pursuing charter amendments. Stewart also appeared to be against the amendment.
