BLYN — The Sequim City Council apparently sailed into a gray area when a quorum of the council attended the Navy’s Feb. 20 briefing to the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe.
If council members simply sat and did nothing, they probably complied with state law that requires them to meet and act in public, according to Nancy Krier, assistant state attorney general for open government.
However, if they took “testimony” — depending on how the term is defined — or acted — which could be construed to include forming opinions — they may have tripped over Washington’s Open Public Meetings Act, according to Krier.
Ron Richards, a former Clallam County commissioner and a critic of the Navy’s Pacific Northwest Electronic Warfare Range proposal, said the meeting was illegal.
Sequim’s city attorney said it was legal.
And Krier said she’s uncertain which man is right.
The briefing nine days ago at tribal headquarters in Blyn was closed to the public at the tribe’s request.
The tribe sought the Navy’s reasons for its proposal to fly electronic warfare tests over areas that include tribal treaty fisheries.
A dozen non-tribal citizens who tried to attend were escorted to a nearby parking lot by tribal police officers and three Clallam County sheriff’s deputies.
The deputies acted in their capacity as the tribe’s civil enforcers, said Jamestown S’Klallam Chairman Ron Allen.
The Navy’s critics — one group headed by Richards, a Port Angeles lawyer, and another composed of Whidbey Island residents calling themselves Citizens of Ebey’s Reserve — already had made their case to the tribe, Allen said.
Their opposition had prompted the Jamestown S’Klallam to invite the Navy for a government-to-government briefing, he said.
Because the tribe had other business to conduct with the Sequim City Council, it also invited council members to attend. After the briefing, both councils met publicly about extending Sequim wastewater services to Blyn.
People were escorted from the center because Allen wanted to head off any protest at a meeting the tribe had initiated, he said.
“To politicize that and do that sort of protesting on the doorstep of a respectful government-to-government meeting would be inappropriate,” he said.
No one from the Whidbey Island group tried to attend the meeting or protest outside it.
As for the other critics, Richards said he’d urged them “to let your mere presence express our concerns over this session,” which he called a “secret meeting.”
Richards’ group carried no signs and distributed no pamphlets.
“Out of respect to the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe we do not believe there should be any loud protests or demonstrations,” Richards wrote to members of his email list.
“The tribe has every right to meet with the Navy as it wishes. It is the Sequim City Council that should not do so in probable violation of the Open Public Meetings Act.”
The secrecy accusation continues to fuel controversy.
Richards said the same secrecy had marred the Navy’s proposal from its outset.
He said the Navy failed to publish a notice of environmental assessment in North Olympic Peninsula news outlets or hold public meetings on the Peninsula before citizen outcry demanded them.
“The Sequim City Council is exacerbating those failures,” he said, adding that the Navy might have “compromised” council members.
“If the Navy told the Sequim City Council the [EA-18G Growler jet overflights] would make the lavender grow better in Sequim, would the council sit there and take that at face value, or would they try to evaluate it as something they could believe or not believe?” Richards asked.
Whatever they’d believe, council members acted, Richards said, even inadvertently.
“They received public testimony. They listened to discussions. They must have evaluated what they were hearing,” he said.
But Craig Ritchie, Sequim city attorney, said the council members — at his advice — simply sat and listened without discussing the issue or taking action.
“We were sitting there with our mouths shut,” Ritchie said. “We were just attending. We were not deciding.”
As for Richards’ contention they took “public testimony,” Ritchie said the meeting’s privacy precluded any testimony being public.
Richards, however, said the state Legislature’s intent in the Open Public Meetings Act “was that public testimony would mean testimony from [members of] the public.”
The city has invited the Navy to present another briefing at a public meeting the City Council hopes to host. A date for the briefing has not yet been scheduled.
According to Ritchie, it’s at this future meeting where council members will solicit not only the Navy’s proposal but citizens’ opposition.
The City Council, Ritchie said, will act only on information provided in public — even if it duplicates what it already heard at the Blyn briefing.
That’s as it should be, Krier said.
“Just sitting in the audience doesn’t trigger the Open Public Meetings Act,” she said.
Part of the issue is the meaning of the term “testimony.”
“The act defines action to mean the transaction of the official business of a public body, including testimony received,” Krier told the Peninsula Daily News.
The matter also turns on the term “action,” which Richard said includes forming opinions.
“There is no doubt in my mind that they took action at this meeting,” he said.
Krier said the issue was unclear.
In light of the ensuing controversy, Ritchie said: “I would like to say they didn’t listen. But we all listened.”
As for the briefing, “the presentation essentially was the same material” the Navy already has presented, he said.
Yet therein looms the gray area, according to Krier.
“The [Open Public Meetings] Act defines ‘action’ to mean the transaction of official business, including public testimony received,” she said.
“If you move over to discussion of the agency’s business and you have a quorum, then yes, it could trigger the Open Meetings Act requirements.
“I just couldn’t say one way or the other.”
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
