Sponsor ‘can’t negotiate’ recall wording

The wording of a ballot measure to recall Spokane Mayor Jim West can’t be changed easily to speed up the process, the sponsor of the recall effort said Wednesday.

Shannon Sullivan said the Spokane City Council’s suggestion Tuesday that she sit down with West and work out language acceptable to both sides just doesn’t make sense at this point in the legal case.

“I can’t negotiate it,” Sullivan said. “The only people who can change the wording are Judge (Craig) Matheson, or the state Supreme Court.”

The council voted 6-1 Tuesday night in favor of a resolution urging a fast review of West’s appeal of the recall decision. But Sullivan pointed out that she’s already done that.

“My motion for an expedited review got there (to the Supreme Court) before West’s appeal,” said Sullivan, who is acting as her own attorney with some advice recently from a pair of local attorneys.

The court will consider an expedited review on July 14.

Sullivan’s recall petition initially listed three reasons for voters to consider turning West out of office. After a hearing last month, Matheson, a visiting judge from Benton and Franklin counties, threw out two of the allegations.

But the judge ruled there was sufficient information to continue the recall process on the allegation that West “committed acts of misfeasance in that: He solicited internships for young men for his own personal uses.”

Matheson also rewrote the ballot synopsis to read:

“Between March 8, 2005, and April 9, 2005, Mayor James E. West used his elected office for personal benefit. On March 21, 2005, he authored a letter intending to help obtain a student internship with the city of Spokane for a person he believed to be an 18-year-old high school student. During a series of Internet conversations, before and after the letter, Mayor West sent a photograph of himself to the person, raised issues of sex, discussed dating and urged the person to keep Mayor West’s identity a secret. Mayor West admits these conversations. Offering to help obtain a student internship with the city of Spokane under these circumstances was an improper exercise of an official duty.”

West has said he wouldn’t object to speeding up the recall process and getting the issue before voters, but believes the new wording is unfair to him. His attorneys weren’t available for comment Wednesday on the council’s suggestion to negotiate new wording.

Council President Dennis Hession, who is an attorney, and a deputy attorney general who handles elections issues both said that Sullivan is probably right that Matheson would have to approve any change in the ballot wording.

Judges usually agree to any settlement that satisfies both sides of a legal dispute, Hession said. But a recall petition is different from a lawsuit, and Matheson may have an obligation under state law to present voters with a ballot statement he believes is correct, he added.

Matheson might also be prevented from approving any change if someone else shows up in the courtroom and objects, said Deputy Attorney General James Pharris.

West probably would have to drop his appeal before taking the new wording back to Matheson, Pharris added. Otherwise, the case is under the jurisdiction of the state Supreme Court.

Superior Court judges usually make a few changes in the ballot wording, he said. Major changes “are unusual but not unheard of.”

Pharris said he knows of no case in which a recall sponsor and the elected official negotiated changes to the ballot synopsis, but added that recall cases are relatively rare. Most recall proposals that get past a Superior Court judge fare poorly on appeal, he said.

“The (Supreme) Court nearly always reverses them,” Pharris said. “It’s fairly unusual to get to the ballot.”