Lynnwood mayor accused of misusing city resources

Published 7:36 am Friday, February 29, 2008

LYNNWOOD — Mayor Mike McKinnon has been accused of an ethics violation involving a statewide referendum in 2002.

The 72-page complaint, signed by Lynnwood resident Arnie Knudson, alleges McKinnon improperly used city time, office space and staff in support of R-51, a transportation measure on the general election ballot in November 2002. The document was received by city officials on Sept. 23.

McKinnon said people occasionally call or e-mail him at his City Hall office to endorse an issue or candidate and he has responded.

“I did pass along information on (R-51) but I wasn’t campaigning for it,” McKinnon said.

McKinnon said he did eventually decide to endorse it and he said he did write that in an e-mail he sent to his staff and the City Council members.

“But it never occurred to me one way or another it would be inappropriate,” McKinnon said. “It was just some e-mails that came through and I passed along.”

According to McKinnon’s e-mail record, which Knudson requested and received from the city, McKinnon sent out, responded to, or forwarded “improper” e-mails to the City Council, his staff and others about 20 times in 2002.

According to the complaint, most of the e-mails from McKinnon were inquiring with the City Council if they wanted to look into taking a stance on R-51 or forwarding information from R-51 supporters to staff and Council members.

There was an e-mail from McKinnon asking his office assistant to “gather documents” for him to sign for endorsement of the referendum as well.

“I don’t recall thinking it was inappropriate at the time and no one else told me they thought so either,” McKinnon said.

After one of his department heads questioned the e-mails as possibly being construed as campaigning, McKinnon said it did occur to him he probably shouldn’t have been dealing with the matter at the city and stopped doing it.

When he first saw the 72-page ethics complaint, McKinnon said, “My first thought was, ‘Man, if people would put out this much energy doing something negative just think what an impact they’d make putting this much energy into something positive.’”

Knudson didn’t return calls from The Enterprise.

The city’s ethics board planned to have its regular meeting on Oct. 6, after the Enterprise deadline.

The board would likely not take up the complaint at that time, because of a new procedure which directs the board retain counsel to review and decide whether a complaint will come before the board, according to board member Jonathan Hatch.

The board was scheduled to retain counsel at the Oct. 6 meeting, Hatch said. In the meantime, the complaint will wait for an attorney to be hired by the ethics board to be reviewed.

This is the second official ethics complaint against McKinnon since he became mayor in January 2002.

In August 2002, Fire Chief Bob Meador was put on paid administrative leave after refusing to follow a McKinnon directive to approve a fire-lane change on new building plans for Seaview Chevrolet-Pontiac-GMC in Lynnwood. Meador filed a complaint against the mayor.

McKinnon made himself acting fire chief, with the approval of city attorney Greg Rubstello, and approved the fire-lane change.

The ethics board found McKinnon not at fault for reasons including he had followed direction from Rubstello, according to the board’s report from December 2002.