An Open Letter to Cy Sun

Note: If any readers out there are friends of Mr. Sun, they might encourage him to read this.

Dear Mayor Sun:

It's my understanding that City Clerk Jane Montgomery is on leave at this writing, and there are intimations that you intend to fire her. That would be, as they say, worse than a crime. It would be a blunder. An enormous blunder that could affect you financially.

I don’t pretend to be an attorney. But I do pretend to be an individual who has observed public figures and their mistakes for 40 years. As a reporter, I had a front-row seat on the errors that officials make and the consequences they bear for making those errors. Some have been thrown out of office. Some have gone to prison. The memory of their folly was one of my greatest assets as a city councilman.

I believe if you are planning to terminate Ms. Montgomery, it could result in your being thrown out of office and also of paying for that mistake out of your own pocket. At this point, I’m not really concerned about your welfare, but I greatly respect Jane Montgomery and I find it repugnant that she should be harmed. As a former employee of the Pacific Police Department, she managed to, as the saying goes, lie down with dogs and not get up with fleas. In my personal dealings with her she has always shown the highest degree of professionalism. She has behaved ethically and courteously, as well as conscientiously. She’s among the best the City of Pacific has been blessed with in 40 years. She is the kind of employee you should be recruiting, not harassing.

Instead, you appointed Howard Erickson as your building inspector. I know Mr. Erickson. I actually like Mr. Erickson. He and I had many bruising battles when I served on the council, but for some reason I have no rancor toward him. We can have great give and take conversations. But I am also the person who takes some credit for the fact that Mr. Erickson will never be elected to public office in Pacific ever again, because of the information I published in my newsletter, the River City Wrapper. And I wouldn’t be saying this, if he didn’t bring it upon himself by forcing Ms. Montgomery to seek a restraining order against him. You had no business hiring an unqualified individual as building inspector who would then try to bully other employees.

Mr. Erickson first became a political force to be reckoned with in 1975, when Police Chief Ron Earwood, responding to an aid call, became involved in the assault on a couple of individuals, one of whom was awaiting an aid car. As I heard the story from an eyewitness, the injured man was drunk and fell off a fence, smacking the ground hard. Police responded to the call for an aid car, a scuffle ensued, billy clubs were used, and the city ended up with a million dollar lawsuit on its hands. This was not the first assault by Mr. Earwood. Some time earlier he assaulted a fifth-grade teacher at Alpac Elementary School for telling the local judge to wait until a women’s physical fitness class was over before starting court in the school gymnasium. During that assault, the city’s prosecuting attorney fled the scene, probably so that he wouldn’t have to be called as a witness against his own client. 

So the powder keg was sitting around for some time before the assault that inflamed the community and resulted in Mr. Erickson becoming mayor, and a powerful political force in the town. Then Mr. Erickson did what you have done – he set about clearing house, including firing the judge. If he had been able to, he also would have fired a popular city clerk and the volunteer fire chief, but fortunately for the city, that didn’t happen.

Mr.Erickson served two terms, then left public office, only to return in 2000 over the controversy of the Immigration and Naturalization Service's attempt to situate a detention center in Pacific. It was a contentious issue that provided an opportunity for Mr. Erickson to return. This also provided an avenue for another individual, who had been diagnosed with a mental disorder, to be insinuated  into city politics, further escalating the goofiness--and the malice.

Here are some critical things to know about Mr. Erickson's term as mayor 2000-2004:

·         He fired Police Chief Stan Aston, a retired state patrolman who had obtained the accreditation for the police department for the first time in its history.

·         He talked the council into saving money by combining police and fire departments, then hired John Calkins to the new office of Public Safety Director two days after the application period closed. Later he disclosed to two individuals that Mr. Calkins was his cousin. Mr. Calkins was not required to fill out a job application which would have required such disclosure.

·         He allowed John Calkins to go into a rage in the presence of network TV cameras when a city councilwoman inquired as to why the fire command staff was out of town when a house burned to the ground because it was being served by a dry fire hydrant.  This fiasco resulted in the hiring of a fire chief, eliminating the proposed salary savings by combining the two departments.

·         He created a public disturbance one day when women were walking from Enumclaw to Seattle to raise money to fight cancer. Angry about the situation of public toilets at the senior center – something the city council had approved – he drove back and forth between Auburn and Pacific, demanding that Pacific’s firefighters abandon their station in Auburn and ordering Milton’s backup firemen to leave the town, until Mr. Calkins arrived and ordered him to allow a police officer to drive him home or be placed under arrest. One must wonder why Mr. Erickson was not allowed to drive himself home. This is all laid out in a public document, a letter from past councilwoman Bernadine Harrison to Mr. Erickson. 

·         He lost the city’s insurance coverage because he refused to attend training which the agency required, partly because of the payout for his procedure for firing Stan Aston. When Canfield and Associates held a public meeting to discuss insurance, the representative disclosed that Mr. Erickson was turned down three times before they agreed to insure the city. There are only two competitive insurance carriers for cities like Pacific, and if we had lost Canfield, alternate insurance coverage would have been more limited and very expensive.

·         When the city was notified that a local improvement district was being billed inconsistently, it was determined that a change of treasurers was necessary. The council went along with this, but when Mr. Erickson wanted to hire a former employee for the position and I suggested we should examine the person’s credentials, he became enraged. This issue was resolved at a council meeting when we agreed to hire the individual on contract to give her an opportunity to demonstrate competency. But when it came time to approve the contract, the city attorney was absent and Mr. Erickson said he didn’t know where he was at. Well, that was true. But he did know why the attorney wasn’t present – he had ordered him not to show up with the contract, and Clint Steiger, Mayor Pro Tem, was planning to convince the other council members to just go ahead and confirm the new treasurer. What Mr. Erickson and Mr. Steiger were too unprofessional to understand, was that the president of the council, Karen McIver, did what any intelligent council person would do – she had phoned the attorney to make sure everything was in place for the meeting. She and I both knew the game plan hours before it played out, but we couldn’t say anything because we didn’t want to have the attorney fired for doing what he was legally obliged to do. (He was the only professional person she could rely on.) We tried to persuade the council members not to vote to confirm, and I walked out in protest, telling them I was afraid they might do something illegal. Richard Hildreth, Wayne Strong, Ora Meyer and Clint Steiger did just that – they voted to confirm an appointment for a person whose position was supposed to be advertised – and wasn’t.

·         When Glenda White, the city’s postmistress, convinced the council that she had been wrongly double billed for years for her sewer service, the council voted to approve a reimbursement. Under the state’s fraud statute, that was the standard. But Mr. Erickson didn’t want to return the money. Ms. White said she simply would not pay her sewer bill until she was even with what was owed. So Mr. Erickson committed what I considered to be extortion – he threatened to shut off her water if she didn’t accept the half-payment he offered her. That check, which was issued by our new illegally-confirmed treasurer, was never approved by the council, which must approve all expenditures.

·         When J.J. Ramme was hired as the new community service director, we were blown away with her quality. And the council voted too quickly to confirm, because we never examined her contract. What contract? She was told she would be paid $40,000 a year. But after leaving her former job, she found out her checks were reflecting a salary of $30,000 a year. I think another employee sandbagged her, but she didn’t know, and she was in no position to complain. It took months and some very indirect and carful diplomacy to get her paid what she had been promised. My one regret is that she didn’t sue the city for back pay when she left.

Mr. Erickson's disregard for procedure and institutions was also expressed in his attitude toward the Cities and Schools Forum, an association of small local government, including Auburn, Algona, Pacific, the Auburn School District, Green River Community College and the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe. The forum was created to share the resources of these agencies and to identify common interests. When it was Algona's turn to host the meeting, Mr. Erickson told Algona Mayor Glen Wilson, in the presence of J.J. Ramme, Pacific's community services director,  that Pacific would not attend. When I attended the meeting as a Pacific City Council member he refused to cut my reimbursement check, even though the council had set aside the money for that. When I asked him in council meeting why Mrs. Ramme had not been present, he said it was because she was on vacation. This is the individual that political novice you appear to be relying on for guidance.

Here's my message to you, Mr. Sun:

While you are not as self-serving as Mayor Richard Hildreth, you are more reckless than Mr. Erickson ever was.

Ms. Montgomery was ethically, if not legally correct, in questioning Mr. Erickson's qualifications as a building inspector. In my opinion, if she acted under the whistleblower's act, and if she is correct, she is virtually "fire proof." The last thing you want to do is punish people who have found you in egregious error, who have reported it, and who are correct. You not only open the city to a great liability, you probably have opened yourself up as well. If you are acting contrary to your city attorney's advice, I doubt that you have any liability coverage.

You are not fighting the Korean War any more. You are not a war hero this time. You are out of your element. You may not “buy the farm” in this battle, but you might have to mortgage it to cover your legal costs and the payout. If you try to punish a competent and respected public servant who is serving the public well by blowing  the whistle for your misfeasance, you’ve got it coming.