Clallam County, city Port Angeles nearing criminal justice agreements

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, May 19, 2026

PORT ANGELES — Clallam County staff is making headway with its negotiations of criminal justice contracts with the city of Port Angeles.

County Administrator Todd Mielke provided an update on the contracts to the three county commissioners during their work session on Monday.

Instead of one giant contract to cover all criminal justice services provided to the city by the county, it has been broken up into separate contracts for prosecution, public defense, jail and court services, Mielke said.

The county also is working on criminal justice contracts with Sequim but has struggled to meet with city leaders in person, Mielke said.

The existing contract between Clallam County and Port Angeles was for a 10-year term which ended Dec. 31. The two entities have a six-month extension on the contract while they negotiate new terms. The extension is set to expire June 30.

A big topic of discussion has been surrounding the area of public defense, Mielke said.

“We find our position to be one of being in the middle where we have a client that’s ultimately receiving the services in the name of the city and we have a provider of those services in the name of Clallam Public Defenders,” he said. “And so, if there’s ever a disagreement between the client and the provider, we’re in the middle trying to resolve that.”

The county presented a rough draft contract for jail services to the city last week, which Mielke said is the biggest cost of all the criminal justice services.

“The jail services contract, should the city not decide to pursue it, impacts our scope of services, how we provide services and the other three buckets,” Mielke said. “So if prisoners are housed at another facility, say Jefferson County, that changes how public defense presents its services.”

Clallam County officials left the meeting with the city last week feeling like the jail services contract is about 99 percent finished.

“We felt that we’re very close on the public defense contract and shortly thereafter would be the prosecution contract and the district court services contract,” Mielke said. “So our goal is to present the jail draft contract and the public defender draft contract by (Tuesday), close of business.”

One point of interest which continues to emerge in the negotiations is on prosecution services, Mielke said.

“(The city of Port Angeles is) really interested in the number of referrals that ultimately get charged as crimes,” he said. “We have had lots of discussion on this.”

One vocal voice during those discussions has been Harry Gasnik, chief pubic defender of Clallam Public Defenders.

“(Gasnick) said, ‘If you incentivize financially filing charges against my clients, I will yell foul as loud as I can,’” Mielke said.

The point has become the elephant in the room with the city wanting to know how it can tell from which services they’re getting charges filed.

“This issue has surfaced multiple times; I’m not convinced it’s gone away,” Mielke said. “I think the prosecutor has said, ‘If I’m supposed to be meeting a quota, I’m not your guy.’”

The prosecuting attorney’s office has informed the cities every time it has decided not to prosecute a case, Commissioner Randy Johnson said.

Another issue has been that Port Angeles’ municipal code needs to be updated, which the city is currently working on, Mielke said.

Park property

During the work session, commissioners also discussed a request the National Park Service has received regarding private property owners selling property within the boundaries of Olympic National Park to the park service.

Truda Stella, the realty officer for the Pacific West Region of the National Park Service, explained the process of such land acquisitions to the commissioners.

“We are in the early stages of due diligence on a couple tracts in the county,” Stella said. “I just want to highlight we only work with willing sellers, and in this case, these are all private individuals who approached the park about acquiring their land.”

The National Park Service, before it can even get an appraisal on land, is required to request an expression of support from county leadership. This is a new requirement for land acquisitions which went into effect this year, Stella said.

The expression of interest — which commissioners agreed to — allows the park service to perform research on the properties, get them appraised and then discuss a purchase with the landowners.

“We have very strict rules about how much we can pay in terms of purchase price, and so the landowners are very interested in what the appraised value is,” Stella said.

If the park service completes due diligence and the landowner is interested in the price the park service can pay, then they would come back to the commissioners for a formal letter of support for the acquisition.

At this point in the process, the lands in question are not being listed publicly.

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Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached by email at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.