Whatcom County Council members violated state open meetings law in 2010 because they discussed council business via email, when it should have been done in an open meeting, state auditors said.
The state Auditor's Office on Tuesday, Dec. 27, released the results of an audit into various areas of the county in 2010. It contained no 'findings,' which are considered more serious problems. But auditors sent a letter to county management on issues they said needed to be addressed.
Auditors looked at three instances in 2010 in which council members sent emails to the full council. In two cases, a council member responded to the whole council. Under state law, emails discussing county business sent to a quorum of the council meet the definition of "action" that needs to be done in an open meeting, the letter stated.
In February 2010, council member Sam Crawford emailed the council with his thoughts on court funding. Council member Barbara Brenner responded with her opinion. In September 2010, council member Ken Mann emailed the council to point out a blog post he'd done discussing a public disclosure request. Brenner responded. Also in September, Crawford emailed the council asking to poll them on scheduling for rural zoning and growth policy changes.
Mann's email discussed a public records request by Bellingham activist Wendy Harris. Harris said she filed a complaint with the Auditor's Office but never heard back and didn't know auditors had looked into it. She told the state that, "in essence, the County Council privately convened, via email, for the purpose of discouraging the submission of (public records) requests that are 'burdensome,' 'time-consuming' and 'disgusting,'" Harris said, quoting words council members used to describe her request for their calendars.
Mann, in an interview, said he thinks "it's really important that we do everything transparent, out in the open, just so everybody can see what we're doing." He called a special meeting to discuss the issue of emails and public meetings a year ago, he said.
It's a challenge walking the fine line between the efficiency technologies bring and transparency, and it's tough to know where the line is, he said.
Council staff is drafting a policy on council members' email usage, and Crawford said he thought the letter would inform staff.
"I'm not going to complain about it, because I think that anything that holds us to a higher level of transparency is a good thing," Crawford said.
The letter reinforces that when you put it into writing it "apparently brings it into the venue of an actionable item," even though the rural zoning email dealt only with scheduling, he said.
Brenner said she now understands the danger in responding to the whole council, which she doesn't do anymore. She used to do it often.
"I always thought the more I copied the better. The more people who know, the better, so I'm not catching them by surprise or anything," she said.
Emails are subject to release to the public under state law, with some exceptions. The result is the public will lose out because less will be put into releasable emails, she said.
INVENTORY PRACTICES DINGED
State auditors said Whatcom County needs to improve inventorying of its capital assets.
In a letter sent to the county after an audit for 2010, auditors said the county hasn't been doing an annual inventory of all capital assets, and it can't provide evidence of a complete inventory of capital and what are called "small and attractive assets," things like cameras and laptop computers.
"Sometimes stuff goes missing, and you really don't know that it's missing until you do the inventory," Auditor's Office spokeswoman Mindy Chambers said.
"We basically just need to go through and more comprehensively track everything down," said Brad Bennett, the county's finance manager. The small and attractive items are currently tracked, he said.
"Their main sticking points were going through our real property and making sure that's up to date and tracking down all our vehicles," he said. "We thought we had a pretty good handle on that, but we never really physically went out and inventoried all our vehicles."
They include things like trailers and rarely used vehicles. Bennett said he's pretty sure they'd know if a vehicle were missing.
SEE THE AUDIT
To read the audit and related documents, click on the links below:
Council member emails regarding:
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