The electrician, the Pacific City Council and the Washington State Constitution: Déjà vu all over again

Some things never change. And yes, those who don't learn the mistakes of history are damned to repeat them. For example, in Pacific, Washington, a jerkwater town attached like a carbuncle to the backside of Auburn, the city council has been fighting it out with Mayor Richard Hildreth, a small-time electrician, over the knotty problem of hizzonor's use of a city credit card for personal travel and allotting public funds to underwrite his career plans to become a Federal  Emergency Management Agency instructor. Tsk. Tsk. In Washington, cities are creatures of the state, and the state's constitution has a very specific prohibition about misusing the state's credit. Basically, you don't do it. The city attorney should have been able to tell the mayor that. Municipal Research and Services Center (MRSC), an agency that advises public officials, could have told any member of the council that. And Clint Steiger, the council's senior member, should have known that. Which makes it all the more delicious, for reasons yet to be shared.

Mr. Steiger, who likes to point out that he has lived in Pacific most of his life, probably was in town in the 1950s,  when Pacific had perhaps 2,000 people and there weren’t many places to hide. According to Ralph Pommert, now deceased, a bulb grower and former elected official, the city even then had its own electrician-- and this time, instead of being mayor, he was an employee. And what an electrician he was. He did such a fine job for the city on one particular project that the city council voted to give to him all the materials that were left over when the job was done.  According to Mr. Pommert, the King County prosecutor found out about this gift of public property and asked the council members whether they would prefer jail time or resignation. They chose to resign in stages, appointing a few replacements at a time until the entire council had a brand spanking new face. 

But wait! There's more! 

Well, OK, that's what I recall from an interview I had about 35 years ago. But there's apparently even more to the story, as the news clips immediately  below reveal. These came  from a February, 1956 issue of the Auburn Globe-News. 

I haven't been able to obtain Pacific City Council minutes demonstrating that the entire council resigned, but the back issues of the Globe reveal that the electrician sued for defamation, and six years later the case was finally resolved. At that time, with the issue back on the front burner, there were 19 Pacific city government candidates competing for every elected seat in the city. Lot of excitement.  Since we don't have any record yet showing whether the entire council had been forced to resign, perhaps the current Pacific City Council can ask the prosecutor to research this and see if there is any precedent for pushing them out the door. That would be helpful.  

According to the scuttlebutt, James McMahon, chair of the Pacific City Council finance committee, pictured below, is concerned over misuse of that city credit card.

Well, let's see here. The council procedures call for the finance committee to review all warrants; two members of the finance committee are required to sign off on the validity of the warrants. I think that means sign their names. Yes, their signatures. After that, the entire council votes on whether to pay the bills on what is customarily described as the "consent agenda", or something like that. In other words, I'm given to believe that all the sheep sitting around the council table  nodded their heads and bleated approval for  expenditures which are prohibited by the state's constitution and now some of them want a prosecutor to find out who painted the roses red. I have an idea—why don’t we just all light our hair on fire with gasoline and put it out with a hammer?

Maybe this would be a good time to join in on a song from Disney's Alice in Wonderland. C'mon everyone!

"Oh, painting the roses red
And many a tear we shed
Because we know
They'll cease to grow
In fact, they'll soon be dead
And yet we go ahead
Painting the roses red

Painting the roses red
We're painting the roses red
Oh, pardon me
But Mister Three
Why must you paint them red?

*talking*

Huh? Oh! Well, the fact is, Miss
We planted the white roses by mistake
And...
*singing*
The Queen she likes 'em red
If she saw white instead
She'd raise a fuss
And each of us
Would quickly lose his head
[Alice:Goodness!]
Since this is the part we dread
We're painting the roses red"

Sweet irony

Let’s not miss an opportunity to savor some irony here. A few years ago the city council's mantra was "we're just upholding the law." They were singing this tune during the period when minorities were being racially profiled to the point that a protest march was organized. The response of the city’s public safety director, John Calkins, was to tell the protesters they would be arrested if they exercised their constitutional rights (there's that "constitution" word, again.) and he summoned police from several jurisdictions to add muscle to the threat. Not to be outdone, Mr. Hildreth sent out a press release confirming that the protest would not be allowed, thereby eliminating all opportunity to deny that he approved this move. This was just before the American Civil Liberties Union took a moment to clarify to the city attorney that, gee, uh, there are some fine points of federal criminal law here that, uh, a couple of your public officials just may have violated.  (Now this raises a nagging question for me: Is this really a criminal violation? And if a public official commits that violation, is he a, uh, criminal? I wouldn't want to put any of our officials on the spot, but isn't this kinda the sort of thing you wonder about at times like this? Perhaps Mr. Calkins and Mr. Hildreth had the same concerns, because they not only demonstrated some great tap dancing skills at the time, but they also performed a faster-than-light moonwalk that Michael Jackson would have coveted.

Why listen?

It was following that development that I spoke to the Pacific city council, pointing out to them that violations of law had forced the resignation of the entire city council in years past and offering to share with them some insights that might steer them into calmer waters, if they were interested. In the council's uh, wisdom, they allowed their brightest member to define the response. Nicole Hagestad , whose loony behavior included videotaping members of the audience from her council chair, didn't think there was any reason to receive any further information from the public. And why should they pay attention? They were getting away with this stuff. So far, anyway.

 

There’s a homily you may have heard of: “What goes around comes around.” Now I promised you there would be more to share where Mr. Steiger was concerned, and here it is: A few years ago there was a problem involving a local improvement district; the fees weren’t being collected uniformly The council was supportive of Mayor Howard Erickson’s attempt to find a replacement treasurer, but I raised the issue of ensuring that the person was competent. Granted, competency is an unrealistic expectation in Pacific, so naturally the suggestion was understandably controversial. A firestorm erupted, and the council agreed to evaluate the applicant by hiring her on contract. The city attorney was directed to draw up the contract, which the council would consider when it reconvened. So far, so good. Ah, the day of the meeting came, and Karen McIver, council president and finance chair, did what any professional working any place except Pacific might do – she contacted the city attorney to ensure that everything was in order. 

With eight years experience as mayor, it apparently didn’t occur to  Mr. Erickson that Ms. McIver would take the unprecedented step of performing professionally, or that the city attorney might tell Ms. McIver the truth, that the mayor had instructed him not to draw up the contract or attend the meeting. So at 10 a.m. that morning Ms. McIver and I knew that Mr. Steiger was going to steer the council into confirming the candidate as treasurer instead of hiring her on a temporary contract. He was going to pull the wool over their already half-closed eyes. 

Too dumb to save

Just imagine  the dog and pony show Mr. Erickson and Mr. Steiger put on for us that day, until I rose, said I thought we should not be taking action without our attorney present and left, leaving Richard Hildreth, Ora Meyer, Wayne Strong and Clint Steiger to smugly confirm the new treasurer without bothering to advertise the position as required by city ordinance. By so doing, Mr. Steiger made himself and his three colleagues subject to recall for violating their oaths of office to follow the law. You can’t say they weren’t warned – that was the whole purpose of my walking out. I did my level best to protect those buffoons without getting the attorney fired for telling Ms. McIver the truth, which he was required to do as an officer of the court. My colleagues were just too stupid to protect. 

Inadvertent payback?

As I say, what goes around comes around. based on his shenanigans over the appointment of a city treasurer, Mr. Steiger had led Mr. Hildreth and other council members into violating the law. And now with his use of the city credit card, it is quite possible that Mr. Hildreth has returned the favor, in a kind of unintentional payback. 

Mr. Hildreth's brazen grab at public dollars to pay for his personal education is tasteless, but not unexpected. Taking a page out of Richard Nixon's playbook, he seems to have the attitude that if the mayor does it, it's not illegal. Over the past few years he has worked to create what some people in Eastern Block countries would have referred to as a "cult of personality", sort of the great leader syndrome. Every newsletter he sends out to communicate with the public invariably leaves you wondering how he avoids repetitive motion injury from continually patting himself on the back. During the past summer a number of yards were blooming with signs proclaiming "We Believe in Mayor Rich--a heartwarming display of spontaneous and unsolicited public support akin to hero self-worship. There's nothing that happens in Pacific that hizzonor doesn't attribute to his own good works, and it makes you wonder why we need all those other people at city hall when we have Mayor Rich. His  silence about their contribution is deafening. Meanwhile, the credit card issue grinds ahead as we await for possible word from a prosecutor. I wonder... is misuse of the state’s credit as serious a violation now as it used to be, or has the prosecutor gone soft on greed?

Next time: This blog has touched a lot on the integrity of our mayor. We'll revisit that exciting subject, next blog, on SPEED TRAP CITY!

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