Pierce Co. city in ‘rebuild’ phase after controversy, dueling ethics complaints
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- New mayor Scott Drennen focuses on restoring council meetings and process.
- Council voted 6-1 to dismiss two ethics complaints to move forward.
- City weighs $36M wastewater upgrade, severance payout and temp staffing.
Orting’s new mayor says the city is in a “rebuild” phase after controversy surrounding the city’s wastewater treatment plant.
The city’s current plant is 30 years old and needs upgrading. In order to do that, the city is working on the Water Resource Recovery Facility, a project to upgrade the plant.
Last September, The News Tribune reported on two ethics complaints tied to the plant, one against then-deputy mayor Melodi Koenig and one against then-city council member and mayoral candidate Christopher Moore. These complaints led to heated city council sessions that, at its peak, led former mayor Josh Penner to withdraw city staff from future meetings.
Since then, Orting has seen many new faces.
Current mayor Scott Drennen won the mayoral election on Nov. 4, 2025, with 1,274 votes to Moore’s 1,216. Drennen took over the seat from Penner, who left the mayoral position to represent District 31 in the Washington State House of Representatives.
The 7-person Orting City Council also has some fresh blood in three of its seats. Ed Torres, John Williams and Dale Reed were the winners of the November election, replacing former council members Tod Gunther, Moore and Koenig respectively.
The city’s attorney, Kendra Rosenburg, resigned – and former city administrator, Scott Larson, left after the city ended his contract.
“Starting the new position as mayor, it was coming in, with, basically an opportunity to start anew,” Drennen said.
‘I think they’re working very well together’
On Sept. 4, Koenig submitted the ethics complaint against Moore. In the complaint, she alleged that Moore inappropriately used his power to influence John Bielka — the city’s former project capital manager who later filed a $10 million wrongful termination claim after being fired for bringing up concerns he had about the plant. Among other things, Koenig alleged that Moore ordered Bielka to fire Parametrix, the city’s main engineering partner, from the project.
Moore reacted by filing an ethics complaint against Koenig, Penner and Larson on Sept. 9. In his complaint, he denied using his power to influence Bielka, saying Bielka became concerned about the plant on his own. Moore alleged he was subpoenaed in Bielka’s case. When Moore asked the city for conflict counsel — an attorney that represents a client when a conflict of interest prevents the original attorney from doing so — the city allegedly refused to provide that for him. He alleged that Penner threatened him with legal action, exclusion and censure if he spoke with an independent attorney.
During its meeting on Sept. 10, the council discussed whether to pass a motion that would have sent Koenig’s ethics complaint against Moore to a hearing examiner for further investigation.
Moore then had an intense back-and-forth with Penner and Rosenburg, which went on for roughly 90 minutes.
The meeting ended with a 5-2 vote to postpone the discussion until after the Nov. 4 election. The next day, Penner announced in a public Facebook post that he would be withdrawing city staff – which included the city administrator, the clerk and the city attorney – from council meetings to protect them from “repeated attacks on staff.”
“This is not a one-off. It is part of a long-standing pattern that has now led to an outright staff exodus. I have now requested this behavior be addressed for nearly a year, and I will take action now,” Penner wrote in his post. “... In less than a year, we have lost or are in the process of losing the services of two city attorneys.”
In his first month as the new mayor, Drennen said one of his top priorities was to make council meetings functional again.
“We looked at how we run our council meetings and what things can I do, structurally, to make our council work more effectively together,” Drennen told The News Tribune.
Drennen has since restructured the committee meetings to follow a “Committee of the Whole” structure – a contrast against the city’s former approach of having individual meetings for the Community & Government Affairs Committee, Finance Committee, Public Safety Committee and Public Works Committee.
“We’ve kind of restructured that whole process to kind of allow for a lot more conversation to take place, all the council members at one time, to better understand all of the issues,” Drennen said.
He noted the meetings will be open to the public, and council members won’t vote at these meetings – they are purely for discussion that allows council to “get all of the information they need to make good decisions going forward.”
On top of these changes, Drennen said, council will have another study session before all of its regular city council meetings to brief council members on topics in the agenda.
“We have a lot of positive input from the council members,” Drennen said. “Coming onto this council, it was difficult at best. I think right now, they’re working very well together and I’m looking forward to getting some things done.”
In its first meeting on Jan. 14, council voted to dismiss both the ethics complaint against Moore and the ethics complaint against Koenig in a 6-1 vote, with council member Greg Hogan being the sole “no” vote.
“You can’t really hold a person to an ethics standard if they’re no longer in office. Pursuing that and taking the city’s resources to try and prove the ethics complaint policy had been violated would have cost the city some financial resources, and, at the end of the day, it would have no impact,” Drennen told The News Tribune. “To kind of begin a rebuild process, we opted it was just best to move forward and start focusing on the future for this city.”
City attorney and city administrator
The city attorney at the Sept. 10 meeting, Kendra Rosenburg, resigned from the City of Orting shortly afterward. On Sept. 23, then-city administrator Scott Larson submitted an agenda item indicating that Rosenburg’s firm would leave the city “in early October.”
The city’s current city attorney is Dan Lloyd from Lighthouse Law Group. The agenda for the Nov. 25 meeting is the first to name Lloyd as the city’s attorney.
Around this time, Orting also lost Larson, the city administrator. Larson had been with the city for 10 years, starting as the city treasurer in 2015.
Drennen told The News Tribune that Larson – who served as the city administrator from December 2024 to November 2025 – was terminated without cause. He said he was unsure of the rest of the details because it occurred before he was sworn in as mayor in January.
The News Tribune emailed Penner to ask about Larson’s departure. Penner directed The News Tribune to file a public records request for documents such as Larson’s contract and termination letter.
On Feb. 19, the city sent The News Tribune copies of Larson’s termination letter and employment contract. The termination letter – which Penner sent on Nov. 5, 2025 – does not list a reason for the termination.
“Effective today, I am terminating your employment with the City of Orting, without cause. ...I thank you for your service to our community and to the staff of the City of Orting,” the letter says.
Penner said the city will pay 10 months of severance pay per Larson’s contract, which adds up to about $154,734.
On Jan. 14, the council hired former city administrator Mark Bethune to be Larson’s temporary replacement.
“Bethune was our city administrator for 17 years before that and he came back to work with me and help with that bridge until we get a more permanent city administrator, and return some stability back to the city,” Drennen told The News Tribune. “We’re very thankful to have him come back on board and work with us during this transition phase and we’re hoping to have a new city administrator on board before summer.”
Where does the wastewater treatment plant stand?
Penner told The News Tribune last year that the city dredges its plant every couple years and sends the material to Eastern Washington.
“Over the past couple of decades, the process for applying those solids to fields has changed, and so the kind of standard best practice is to refine those solids to a more dry form locally and be able to apply them [here] rather than apply them to fields in Eastern Washington,” Penner previously told The News Tribune.
In order to do that, the city has to make upgrades to the plant and get it up to speed. Penner said many small cities are also struggling to upgrade their plants to meet new standards.
“This is pretty common for cities our size. Yelm is going through a similar wastewater treatment upgrade, a lot of small cities are struggling,” Penner said.
Drennen told The News Tribune the city is in talks with the state Department of Ecology for upgrades to the plant.
“We’re negotiating with the Department of Ecology to create a pathway to go forward, but we have a couple options. We’re just looking at balancing that with the rate ratepayers are able to pay,” Drennen said.
In September, Larson told The News Tribune the cost of the project is estimated to be $36 million, with the city looking for ways to reduce that.
Drennen said the specifics of the project — such as the cost and timeline — are still being ironed out, but that he would have more details to share soon.
The project will be funded with an increased sewer rate, Drennen said, which residents will see on their monthly utility bill.
“It’s a real challenge because you have limited resources with what the ratepayers are able to actually be able to afford going into the future, so we wanted to make sure we could find the improvements that are the most respectful to our stewardship of the ratepayers,” Drennen said.
In a Facebook post on Oct. 17, Penner said the DOE told the city they needed to take action before the rainy season started. Drennen said the city was able to make it through the fall – particularly the atmospheric river events in December – relatively unscathed.
“We were able to make it through the high-flow event in December, we were able to make it through that without violation, which was a huge accomplishment,” Drennen said. “We did install a near-term type of fix to remain in compliance where we began removing some of the solids we had in our lagoon and put them into storage to be applied later.”
On June 12, 2024, the city fired the former capital projects manager, Bielka.
On Aug. 28, 2024, Bielka filed a $10 million wrongful termination claim against the city, alleging he was wrongfully terminated after bringing attention to problems with the city’s wastewater treatment plant. The city put Bielka on administrative leave on March 4, 2024 and fired him on June 12, 2024.
“Mr. Bielka was placed on administrative leave after he documented that there were ongoing concerns with the wastewater treatment plant, the proposed design of the plant, and constant leaching of wastewater into the aquifer surrounding the wastewater treatment plant that has continued unabated for over a year,” the tort claim alleged.
Penner previously told The News Tribune the city tested the plant in 2022 and 2025, and both tests “showed no fecal coliform bacteria in any tested sites or wells.”
He also previously told The News Tribune there was an investigation before the city fired Bielka.
“The independent investigation found evidence that Bielka … coordinated to meet with vendors outside of executive or legislative purview – as well as coordinating to terminate a vendor contract without the knowledge of the executive branch – or the legislative branch - despite Bielka being an employee of the executive,” Penner previously wrote in an email to The News Tribune.
Richard Wooster, Bielka’s attorney, previously told The News Tribune the city settled the case for $525,000, with language in the settlement saying the city has “no admission of liability.”
