Written by Having been challenged by Dan Clawson, I have sent my public response to the Seattle Times, Seattle PI, and Renton Reporter, appended onto Dan’s original public release. (As an aside, Dan still seems to resent me for making my email public!?)
Update on Dan Clawson’s wasteful and frivolous lawsuit
I have not seen the lawsuit yet, but an attorney has told me it is based largely on a post-it note that Dan Clawson found while crawling around under the council dais, and rummaging through Don Persson’s garbage can. The note said something like “did you talk to Garrett”. Apparently, Dan had the delusion that he had found O.J.’s bloody knife or something. He used this note to extrapolate that four council members had all had conversations with the Master Builders Trade Association about the legislation that was pending, and that this would constitute an illegal meeting.
Never mind the fact that I had not spoken with the Master Builders Association, or received any kind of communication with them whatsoever. Never mind that the note was not mine, and I had not even seen it. If Dan is going to crawl around like a dog under our desks pulling paper out of cans littered with Pizza crusts, he ought to at least put some rational thought into what they mean and where they came from.
When the Master Builders and I get deposed, it will become clear to all that Dan has no case, and that the whole “meeting” idea was a complete fabrication on his part. But it is already too late for him to avoid ethics violations. Even though he could have easily determined that there was no factual basis for his imaginary meeting by simply asking me a few questions, he filed a politically motivated lawsuit, and I will not consider this over until the state Bar penalizes him for it.
As a little bit of further background, Dan filed this lawsuit within 14 hours of the cantankerous city council meeting, in which Dan loudly insulted his colleague Marcie Palmer, and my resultant defense of Marcie had left Dan visibly shaking. He filed the lawsuit himself, the way Chris Clifford used to file countless lawsuits against the city of Renton when Mr. Clifford was unhappy with a vote.
I have a feeling that had Dan gone to an attorney, the attorney would have advised Dan to calm down for a few days, and to get more facts before getting himself into something he can’t get out of.
Even if there had been a private meeting, which there wasn’t, the fine would have been $100. But Dan’s lawsuit may cost Renton Taxpayers $300,000 if it goes like the City of Shoreline’s two years ago.
As for me, there is nothing I can do other than try to penalize Dan for being an idiot. I can’t lawfully admit to something I didn’t do, so I can’t make this go away. Dan will need to do that, but he seems like he may have had a break with reality.
Finally, lest anyone believe that Dan’s interest is open government, try to remember that I got accolades from across the United States for opening my council email to the public this December. Interestingly, I had resistance to this move from only one person, who insisted that our email should be private. You guessed it….Dan Clawson. I wrote a blog about it at the time, including the original email discussion between me and Dan but decided it was rubbing his nose in it after all the positive press I was getting. But I just made the blog public, since the theme of his phony lawsuit is open government. You can see it for the first time here. You can also see his anger-management issues jumping out of his email.
Potential legal tab in Shoreline council lawsuit “ridiculous”
By Jim Brunner
Seattle Times staff reporter
Former Shoreline Councilman John Chang
A lawsuit accusing four current and former Shoreline City Council members of holding illegal secret meetings two years ago to oust the city manager and decide on his replacement could mean a few hundred dollars in fines for the politicians if they lose.
But for Shoreline taxpayers, the case already has packed a much bigger wallop.
The city is on the hook for more than $340,000 to a private law firm for defending the council members. A second law firm was hired for $7,500 to advise the council on whether to keep paying for the council members’ lawyers. And the city itself was recently added to the lawsuit as a defendant, forcing it to hire a third set of lawyers.
If the city loses the case, it also could wind up paying the plaintiffs’ legal costs, which already top $250,000.
“Ridiculous,” Councilman Ron Hansen said of the mounting legal expenses — a sentiment that both sides seem to share.
The civil suit against council members Maggie Fimia, Robert Ransom, Janet Way and former member John Chang accuses the four, which constitutes a majority, of holding secret meetings in 2005 to force the resignation of then-City Manager Steve Burkett.
The council members deny wrongdoing and say the lawsuit amounts to harassment by disgruntled political opponents.
The case was filed by former council members Constance King and Kevin Grossman and local attorney John Hollinrake Jr. Grossman lost his council seat to Fimia in 2003; Hollinrake and King are longtime critics of the accused council members.
Recent mediation talks failed to produce a settlement. Both sides are digging in for a trial and blaming their adversaries for the mounting legal bills.
The lawsuit has become a major election-year issue for this city of 53,000, a suburb immediately north of Seattle that incorporated in 1995. Fimia and Ransom are up for re-election and have been slammed over the lawsuit in political ads.
The dispute wasn’t supposed to be so expensive. In court papers, the plaintiffs originally said they wanted to make sure “the citizens of Shoreline are not penalized” for the alleged council actions.
But after the local lawyer who filed the case moved to Eastern Washington, the plaintiffs hired new attorneys who dropped the language about protecting taxpayers and added the city of Shoreline as a defendant. State law says attorneys’ fees in such cases can be recovered only from governments.
“It is a divisive lawsuit,” said Steve DiJulio, the attorney for the accused council members. “Where it was a personal attack on the defendants, it’s now an attack on the city itself.”
But critics say the council members have only themselves to blame. The case, they say, could have been settled earlier for a small fine and an apology.
“You can point fingers in any direction that you want, but my opinion is the defendant council members have had the ability to settle this if they wanted to,” said Hansen, who had supported keeping Burkett as city manager.
The City Council last week voted to keep paying the legal bills for the accused members and former member Chang. The accused council members were not allowed to vote on the matter.
“We have to provide this defense. We’re in a contractual box,” Hansen said.
The case centers on whether a series of meetings, e-mails and phone calls among the four council members in December 2005 amounted to an illegal action under the state’s Open Public Meetings Act.
The law says city councils, school boards and other local legislative bodies must debate and make their decisions in public, although closed, executive sessions are common for discussing personnel matters. But under the law, a majority of council members cannot get together and hash out decisions in secret and then trot them out for a rehearsed formal vote in public.
The lawsuit against Fimia and the other Shoreline council members contends they did exactly that — conspiring in a series of private conversations before a Dec. 12, 2005, council meeting to force Burkett’s resignation in exchange for a $140,000 severance package.
Burkett’s ouster came after a contentious November election shifted the balance of power to a majority critical of Burkett and a city-sponsored redevelopment of Aurora Avenue North.
The lawsuit points to a Dec. 9 letter signed by the four council members to an attorney, saying they wanted to terminate Burkett’s contract and were seeking legal advice. The plaintiffs also point to dozens of e-mails and phone calls among the council members.
The lawuit also accuses the council members of deciding on Burkett’s replacement in secret.
Ransom announced at a Dec. 15 Christmas party, according to the plaintiffs, that a majority of the council had “made a decision” to hire Robert Olander, the deputy city manager, to replace Burkett. The council later voted to hire Olander, who has remained in the post.
“None of them seem to see the public-confidence problem they were creating here. Why do you feel you need to go behind everybody’s back and stage this coup?” said Michele Earl Hubbard, an attorney for the plaintiffs.
Fimia says there were conversations among the council members before the Dec. 12 meeting, but they were always careful to avoid gathering as a group of four. That would have been a quorum of the seven-member council and a violation of the open-meeting law.
Tim Ford, open-government ombudsman for Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna, agreed that council members can hold some private discussions as long as they do not gather as a majority.
But Ford noted that council members are not automatically safe if they gather in smaller groups. Courts have ruled that a series of such discussions, including via e-mail, can amount to an illegal decision if a majority participates and arrives at some kind of collective decision.
Fimia, who formerly served on the King County Council, said council members have to be allowed to prepare for meetings and hold some discussions about pending issues. Otherwise they could never get anything done, she said.
Asked whether she could have handled the Burkett situation better, Fimia said she believes her political opponents would have tried to block and harass her no matter how the action was carried out.
“I don’t know what would have happened, but it might not have been any better,” Fimia said.
The case likely won’t be decided before the Nov. 6 election. Lawyers for the city, which was only recently added to the lawsuit, are expected to request that the trial be delayed until early next year to give them time to prepare.
Jim Brunner: 206-515-5628 or jbrunner@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company
More of my thoughts from last night’s meeting; Do’s and Don’t for the mayor and council members
Here are a few more thoughts from last night’s council meeting.
Most importantly, it has become obvious to me that the Mayor does not understand the rationale or the goal behind a public process. We have a public process so that all the parties affected by new rulemaking, laws, expenditures, and other city actions can ensure that we are getting the best results possible, with the most equitable and fair outcome. This public process ensures that we get the best product out there, and spend public resources in the wisest possible way. Everyone who has input to give should be valued for making the end-product better.
But it seems our mayor, and perhaps some councilmember’s, see the public process as a legal nuisance, that slows down the implementation of their “good” ideas. This is obvious from the number of citizens who have reported playing a sort of shell game with the administration, showing up at hearings and being told it’s the wrong one, and then missing the “critical” one because they were out of town or they didn’t hear about it…only to be told that they missed their chance for input. This does not come across as an administration that is trying to get the public’s input.
This was obvious last night as some of the latest work from the mayor’s office had reached the council approval stage, while citizens were still telling us they had not had opportunity for input or there was much work to be done. Instead of the mayor taking council’s position of “let’s get that input as quickly as we can, and make this the right product,” the mayor read a lengthy and one-sided, pre-prepared statement alleging how many times the citizens could have made their inputs if they had wanted to.
The most bothersome issue is that she must have known this complaint was coming (she had a prepared response after all). But in advance of the meeting, instead of her picking up the phone to speak with any of the citizens involved, or let the council know that major stakeholders were not satisfied, she chose to expend city resources trying to convince us that the citizens had all the time they deserved to make their comments.
This might be understandable once, but it has become the absolute pattern with this mayor. It is the same issue we dealt with eighteen months ago at the infamous meeting in which when she tried to prevent highlands citizens from speaking at a public hearing, on the evening that brought us Lipstickgate.
Here are my suggestions to the MAYOR, to prevent another council meeting like last night.
Do:
-Think of the public as the ultimate source for the best information
-Think of citizens and businesses as partners
-Recognize that the executive branch (that’s you) must do the necessary coordination to resolve both the mayor’s concerns and the council concern’s
Do NOT:
-Bully through the public process with an already-firm result in mind
-summarily dismiss citizen suggestions
-Hold it against a working-person if they are late to, or even have to miss, a day-time meeting
-Insult a councilmember who asks to take extra time during a reading of an ordinance
And here are my suggestions to TWO OF MY FELLOW COUNCILMEMBER’S to prevent further entanglements with me.
Do :
-Treat citizens at the podium with respect and courtesy
Do NOT:
-Try to characterize every question by a council member as “another attack on city staff.” (It’s completely obvious you are using the vulnerability of our hard-working city employees, and our affection for them, to hide from accountability for your own actions and decisions.)
-Talk about campaigning for mayor while you are in city hall performing your function as a councilmember.
-Hurl insults at your fellow council members just because you were on the losing side of a vote
Whoa…that was quite a council meeting tonight!
I would not have guessed we would see so many sparks fly at tonight’s meeting. The agenda seemed simple enough.
The two main controversies developed over “downtown wayfinding signs” and “building design guidelines.” The common theme with both issues was that individual councilmembers and other stakeholders felt excluded from the decision process. But in both cases a straightforward request to allow more input started a barrage of insults. Yikes!
I’ll have plenty to write about this, but it’s too late tonight.
Good night all,
Randy
Sonics proposal in Auburn would still cost 452M
A new sonics arena in Auburn would be 78 million dollars less than in Renton, but still cost 452 M. It’s hard for me to see this being any more feasible than reworking the Key Arena, given the fan base is centered in Seattle. As a reminder, the legislature balked at even considering 300M last session. Unless the Muckleshoot indian tribe (which owns the land) has hundreds of millions of dollars to spend, I don’t see this happening.
Lincoln Institute of Land Use Policy: Alternatives to eminent domain
Renton’s efforts to revitalize the Renton Highlands got sidetracked by an unnecessary fight about the possible use of eminent domain, something I and the majority of the Council opposed, but the Keolker administration hung on to. This debate harkened back to an old dispute my wife and I had with the City before I was elected to council (described by this news article).
The complete court case can be found here.
Ultimately, Denis Law and I lead the passing of a motion (I moved, he seconded) which removed eminent domain from the table in the highlands. The mayor reacted by saying that it would now take years for something to happen in the highlands, and she pulled staff time away from the revitalization effort. She seemed convinced that Denis and I were just being narrow-minded, and that the eminent domain plan must be a casualty of misinformation.
State Attorney General Rob McKenna is now investigating use of eminent domain statewide, and the Renton dispute is prominent in his official files. The link below takes you to the Attorney General’s news clippings on disputed uses of eminent domain state wide. (Pages 10-30, approximately, cover the Renton dispute). Click here for Mr. McKenna’s news files on this issue.
I still insist our problem in the highlands was a result of not accepting public input when we needed to, a passionate debate I had with the mayor. Meanwhile, a Cleveland based non-partisan policy center, Lincoln Institute of Land Use Policy, has been analyzing the use of eminent domain for economic revitalization, and they have produced some interesting articles on the topic. I subscribe to their newsletter. Here is their latest:
Weird Al Yankovic at the Puyallup fair
My family and I enjoyed a great show at the Puyallup Fair last night. Weird Al Yankovic, who does parody songs based on the latest rock hits, gave fairgoers an energetic, musical and hilarious two-hour-and-fifteen-minute show.
Our family has most of his albums, and we can sing many of his versions of pop songs by heart, so needless to say we loved seeing him. He is a fantastic showman, and made at least ten significant costume changes during the show. He would accomplish these by running an entertaining video on the big screen, which was either a parody interview of a star, or a music video of one of his many hits.
Some of my favorite performances last night were his tune “White and Nerdy”, which is a parody of the rap song “Ridin Dirty.” For this tune he appeared on a segway, and manged to dance on it for the first third of the song.
Other favorites were his two Star Wars hits, “The Saga Begins” which is based on “American Pie,” and “Yoda” which is based on “Lola.” “The Saga Begins” is probably Weird Al’s best work ever, as he puts the entire Star Wars Episode-One story into a single song, which makes both his fans and “Star Wars” fans (and there is a lot of overlap) delighted. My oldest daughter and her friends used to sing this ten minute song over and over, so it was really fun watching Weird Al and his band sing this hit in Star Wars costumes last night.
He dressed up in a funny fat-suit for for “Fat,” a takeoff of “Bad”, but by then my camera battery was running low, so I missed the photograph.
His encore song was a long ballad called Albuquerque, which he rarely performs because it is so hard on his vocal chords. You have to see it to believe it.
Here are some of the pictures I took of him last night:
Renton’s award-winning former Economic Development Leader, Sue Carlson, says Renton needs Denis law
Year 2000 Public Employee of the year Sue Carlson reminds Denis Law’s campaign of some of the intricate work it took to jump-start Renton’s struggling economy in the 90’s, and how we can lose our momentum today if we don’t have new leadership in the mayor’s office.
I had the honor of serving as City Council President the year that our amazing Economic Development/Long Term Planning Administrator, Sue Carlson, won the title of Outstanding Public Employee from the King County Municipal League for her contributions in turning Renton’s economic fortunes around. That year we got the veterans park and the Henry Moses Aquatic Center started with year-end fund balance windfalls. These revenue windfalls came from new sales tax collections from new retail businesses Sue had recruited. That same year also began the advanced planning for the Landing, as you can see in the Municipal League write-up (linked below).
While Sue Carlson no longer works for Renton, she has a strong passion for our community and is very active in our campaign to get Denis Law elected mayor. Sue Carlson reminded our campaign recently that she helped encourage Denis Law to start the Renton Reporter in 1993, as a means to give our city an identity, a sense of community, a way to market itself to outside bsinesses, and a way for Renton businesses to advertise.
This was around the same time that Sue was bringing our city the support of Eric Temple and his Sprit of Washington Diner Train. Mr. Temple and Mr. Law were two of the first major believers in Renton’s 1990 downtown Renaissance, and the two of them remain great freinds and strong believers in our city. (Unfortunately, this year Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railroad struck a deal with state DOT that ended the Dinner Train’s run in spite of council majority objections; Kathy Keolker’s campaign got a contribution from BNSF for her role, and Denis’s campaign recieved a contribution from Eric Temple for his. I and many others believe we would not have lost the dinner train if Denis had been mayor.)
Sue Carlson is widely known as one of the greatest Economic Development experts in our state, and we finally lost her only because her private sector value was so high that our city could only pay her about a fraction of her market value. Her last few years with our city were very charitable on her part, given the outside job-offers she was passing on. She is one of the many believers in Renton that are going to help Denis Law win this campaign.
Red light and speeding cameras to be activated soon
This article in the Seattle Times provides pretty good information about this program…Click here for the Seattle Times article.
Renton Myspacers were split down the middle on the question of whether this was a good idea. They gave me their opinions about this program back when the Public Safety Committee was reviewing the plan. Here are their comments…click here
I ultimately voted in favor of it because of the public safety benefit, and because there are protections in place to avoid unnecessary intrusion into privacy. Still, I expect some degree of controversy as the fist citations get issues. Bottom line: Please, don’t run red lights, and slow down in school zones when children are present.
Thanks to all of our great friends, old and new, who celebrated our anniversary with us last night!
You all made last night extra special. Thanks for the cake and all the warm wishes.
Randy
Autumn decorations
Thanks to whoever put up these two nice-looking autumn decorations at my home this week. They look great! But we still need a King Parker sign and a Marcie Palmer sign to go with them…so if you have either of these, and you’re in the neighborhood, please post them or drop them by!
Jesse Tanner’s Legacy
Janice Tanner reminded me that her husband Jesse received this beautiful photo collection from the city upon his retirement as Renton Mayor. This collection, which is 3 ft by 4 ft in actual size, provides a nice visual of Renton’s renaissance.
Here is a photo of it, and a detail shot. The inscription says “Jesse Tanner Mayor 1996-2003. You created a legacy for the city of Renton” What can’t be easily depicted is the development agreement for the Landing site, or the lakefront purchase by Paul Allen during Jesse’s tenure.
These are the public projects during his time in office, none of the private development like Southport, downtown condos, or the new auto mall is shown.
My daughter wore my wife’s wedding dress
As my wife and I prepare to celebrate our silver wedding anniversary, it’s fun to note that my wife Cathy made her beautiful wedding dress (see her pictured in her dress in my previous blog entry, two pictures down). This dress was worn again by my lovely daughter Katie, at her wedding 20 months ago at St Mathews Lutheran Church (pictured dancing with me directly below).
I still remember my then-fiance Cathy hemming and sewing/gluing on beads and lace right up until the wedding rehersal…a scene that seemed to play out again at my daughters wedding with the bridesmaids dresses (which the girls and Katie made themselves).
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