PORT ANGELES — The contract that allowed former Port of Port Angeles Deputy Executive Director David Hagiwara to collect more than $200,000 in buyout money and legal fees after port commissioners eliminated his position should be invalidated, former Port Commissioner Len Beil said last week.
Beil will ask the state auditor in January whether the minutes of the Aug. 29, 2000, meeting at which the commissioners approved the contract properly reflect its provisions.
The 2000 contract was voted on by a completely different set of commissioners, Beil among them.
Glenn Beckman and Jack Waud voted for the contract, and Beil against it.
Beil also has urged eliminating the deputy director position.
An advertisement by “Friends of the Port of Port Angeles,” of which Beil said he is a member, which challenges the integrity of the Aug. 29, 2000, minutes, is on Page A7 of today’s Peninsula Daily News.
“We will be asking the state auditor to look at it and see if it’s not in the official minutes, whether or not it’s a legal contract or a legal act of the commissioners,” Beil said in an interview.
The port bought out Hagiwara’s deputy director contract for $201,400 and covered his $10,000 in legal expenses after he triggered a contract clause to challenge the port commissioners’ decision to eliminate his position.
Port commissioners eliminated Hagiwara’s old position on Sept. 22.
Hagiwara, who challenged the firing under provisions of the contract being disputed by Beil, was rehired Dec. 8 as the port’s new director of trade and economic development in exchange for dropping the challenge.
The contract clause calls for the port “to pay any legal fees . . . incurred by the employee in defense of the claim” if a challenge of the termination is found to be valid.
Beil said the deputy executive director contract is invalid because there are no minutes indicating that the board approved the payment clause invoked by Hagiwara, nor does he have any recollection that the commissioners discussed it.
“I had never even seen that,” Beil said. “My goal is to protect the public from whatever the legal ramifications are of having to pay for any legal fees he may want to incur that the port would have to pay.”
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
