The Initiative Charter Amendment Meeting Happened - Ethics Commission Is A Farce
Jun 14, 2024 2:35 am
WATCH UPDATE On Ethics Complaints
After months of waiting, the new Ethics Commission finally began processing multiple ethics complaints and quickly dismissed both of mine. The first step of the process is supposed to determine whether the allegations in the complaint constitute an ethics violation. At this stage, it's not about adjudicating the complaint but about seeing if it meets a basic threshold. However, that's not what occurred. Based on the Commissioners' comments, they evaluated the merit of the complaint without a full investigation, resulting in assumptions that weren't fact-based.
Regarding the Kimsey complaint, where Kimsey was accused of misleading the Council by stating that there were two errors rather than the sixteen discovered, the Commission should have looked at the complaint and the ethics policy or RCW's and asked, "Is there a possibility of an ethics violation?" Instead, the Ethics Commission explained or defended Kimsey's statement without an investigation or full examination of the facts. Even though Kimsey himself stated to the Council that he was addressing the concern that "several campaign recounts proved that the error rate is higher than the standards stated in the Help America Vote Act of 2022," when Kimsey responded, he claimed, "The error that is referenced in the statement above was the result of a human error." Don't forget that Kimsey mentioned "several campaign recounts," meaning more than one recount. He also stated, "That error resulted in two ballots not being scanned into the voting system, and as a result, the votes on those ballots could not be tabulated by the voting system."
The Commission based its decision not on whether there was an ethical rule and a complaint that conflicted but on determining if Kimsey was misleading because he didn't say "only" two ballots.
My other complaint against the Prosecuting Attorney's office was even more egregious. Instead of conducting a basic evaluation of whether the alleged conduct conflicted with ethics policy or RCWs, the Commission provided a rambling explanation, or defense, of the PA's office, suggesting that multiple holidays might have been the reason for their refusal to forward the ballot title. They completely ignored the fact that just two days after I filed the proposed initiative, the PA's office made an improper and illegal determination that they were not going to allow it on the ballot. At this stage, they should have been making a general determination of whether the alleged ethics violation was indeed a possible ethics violation. Instead, the Ethics Commission proceeded to weigh and measure the details of the actions in question without fact-finding, testimony, or a full examination of the complaint. In other words, they exonerated the PA's office without a thorough examination of the complaint.
In short, in Clark County, not being forthright by withholding information, misleading County officials and the public, and refusing to follow the Home Charter law does not constitute an ethics violation.
The Charter Amendment Meeting That Was "Postponed" Came Back To Life And Now Moves To A June 25th Hearing
When the County Manager emailed me on June 7th stating that the Charter Amendment for initiatives wasn't ready and the June 12th meeting was postponed, I told my wife, "I hope this isn't a tactic to prevent the public from weighing in on this issue." Then, an hour later, the County Manager sent another email stating, "I was just informed it will be on the agenda." I interpreted this to mean the postponement decision she had just emailed me about an hour earlier. It turns out they added Kimsey's charter amendment on initiatives back to the agenda, discussed it today (Wednesday, 6/12), and moved it forward to a hearing on June 25th. I don't think it was intentional on the County Manager's part, but I can't rule it out for the others involved.
It was a difficult meeting to endure since the Council seemed more concerned about the impact on the Budget Office—not necessarily the actual cost of initiatives, but the burden on the staff to assess fiscal analysis—than how the proposed charter amendment will make the County initiative process the most restrictive in the State of Washington.
The County will release the details of the future meeting, but the tentative date for the hearing is June 25th. They only posted the draft proposal on Tuesday (6/11), and the Council made significant changes that will allow the Auditor to further put his thumb on the scale against initiatives he or the County doesn't like. Instead of allowing the Budget Office, which normally does appropriate cost projections, the Auditor convinced the Council to allow the Auditor to provide the projections, and Councilor Yung moved to allow that information to be put on the ballot. This move is outrageous and will only ensure that only county-approved initiatives will ever go forward and stand a chance. Anyone who understands how things work realizes that all you have to do is put just enough stink on something, and you'll suppress enough support to kill it. To kill something, you just need to be able to put your thumb on it enough to kill it without appearing to do so, and that's exactly what they are trying to do.
As it stands now, Clark County has the most restrictive process or hurdles for proposed initiatives in Washington State, something that even the PA's office refused to answer when asked directly about today (they didn't want to admit that it was true). No other county gives such broad powers to the Prosecuting Attorney's office, and this will, no doubt, be used to cut off initiative proposals they don't like, just as they attempted with the Restore Election Confidence initiative back in December.
Stay tuned for more details about the June 25th meeting...
