MONROE — City Councilman Kurt Goering knew there was a problem with perception.
It looked bad when he and his fellow council members kept going behind closed doors in the first half of 2009. The group spent 16½ hours there from Jan. 6 through June 22.
He said the need for those meetings dried up in the second half of the year as the city finished negotiating a land deal with Seattle developer Sabey Corp.
“Once we got Sabey out the door, there wasn’t really any reason to have a whole bunch of executive sessions anymore,” he said.
Indeed, the council used executive sessions significantly less from June 30 onward, a drop that took place after The Herald detailed the council’s executive session habit.
In the first half of the year, the council went into executive session 21 times. One meeting lasted for one hour and 42 minutes, the length of a feature film.
In the second half of the year, through Dec. 8, the council used closed sessions seven times for a total of five hours.
The council went from spending a third of its time in the meetings to about a 10th.
Executive sessions allow city leaders to discuss public business behind closed doors for 13 narrowly defined reasons, including matters pertaining to personnel and, yes, the sale of land.
Former Mayor Donnetta Walser said the council’s use of the sessions during her last year in office were justified, largely because of the fragile nature of real estate negotiations.
“We had to do it in executive session,” she said. “If they knew where we were coming from, it would totally weaken the city’s position.”
Walser added that the June story in The Herald helped remind the council it was spending long stretches of time shut away from the public.
“I think it was a wake-up call to some of our council that like to talk,” she said.
Council members said that while the discussions ran long, they were on topic — a necessary requirement of the open meetings law.
Goering said the council has strong internal policing procedures, with the mayor, city attorney and fellow council members keeping each other on track.
While that type of safeguard has its weaknesses, said Tim Ford, an assistant state attorney general who serves as Washington’s open government ombudsman, it also can expose wrongdoing. He said that violations of the open meetings law are generally revealed by someone within city government.
“It’s because some council member opens up,” Ford said.
Council members agree with their former mayor, saying the closed-door meetings were justified.
Councilman Tony Balk said the steep drop in executive sessions occurred after the council had set the price for 24 acres at $9.6 million.
The amount of time spent by the council in executive sessions tends to jump around, Balk said, given the issues facing the group.
The council plans to duck into one of the sessions again this Tuesday, as it discusses another land sale along N. Kelsey Street. Whether that sale will trigger another long string of executive sessions isn’t known.
“If I may, my crystal ball is cloudy,” Balk said.
Andy Rathbun: 425-339-3455, arathbun@heraldnet.com
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