Senate e-mail flap a ‘big deal’ for West

As state Senate majority leader in 2003, Jim West clashed with a fellow Republican whose aide found sexually suggestive e-mails between two male GOP staff members on a state computer.

Instead of disciplining the aides who wrote the e-mails for inappropriate conduct, West went after the Republicans who disclosed the e-mails.

The bitter fight between West and Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, was reported at the time as a battle over disclosing “inappropriate e-mails” – with no mention of the sexual nature of some of the banter.

The old controversy has new significance now that West, as Spokane’s mayor, has acknowledged in a Spokesman-Review investigation that he frequented an online chat room where he offered young men trips, sports memorabilia and City Hall positions.

The Spokesman-Review has asked for all of West’s office e-mails at City Hall and in the state Senate in Olympia.

Christopher Clifford, an open-government activist who worked for the Senate Republican Caucus in 1993 and is now a high school teacher in Tacoma, filed an ethics complaint against West in March 2003 over his handling of the e-mail controversy.

Clifford also filed similar complaints about the two aides’ “obscenity-laced e-mails regarding homosexuals or homosexual activity.”

Sen. West “willingly engaged” in a cover-up “to shield himself from the political embarrassment that would arise from the misconduct of these Republican staff,” Clifford said in his complaint to the Senate Legislative Ethics Board.

West responded Monday by e-mail from City Hall.

“At no time did I act independently regarding the Senate’s action in the Roach matter,” West said. He said the Senate’s Facilities and Operations Committee, including himself, Sen. Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, and four other senators “participated in all decisions that were made.”

Clifford disagreed, saying Roach was treated too harshly during the e-mail flap two years ago.

“Jim’s reaction was over the top,” Clifford said.

“I now believe that Jim felt that Sen. Roach’s staff had gotten into Jim’s own e-mail, and he was worried,” Clifford said. Clifford, who lives in Renton, said he’s considering filing a recall petition against West in Spokane if a current recall effort here falters. Any Washington state registered voter can legally file such a petition.

In August 2003, the Senate ethics board dismissed Clifford’s complaints against West and the two Republican aides. The board said it lacked jurisdiction to regulate e-mail use by a legislator’s staff or to monitor West’s leadership style.

Senate personnel policies allow some private e-mail use on state computers. Staff e-mail isn’t monitored and private voice mail is also allowed, according to the Senate personnel manual.

There was already bad blood between West and Roach at the start of the long 2003 session, in which Republicans controlled the Senate by one vote. Roach was reprimanded by Senate leaders for bringing hostility to her workplace in a dispute with an aide, Tabitha Wells. Roach blamed West and called him power-hungry.

West’s lawyer, Bill Etter, said Monday that West thinks Roach has “had a personal vendetta” against him since the Senate reprimand.

They’d also clashed in 1995 in a dispute over $35,000 in campaign funds that the Public Disclosure Commission ruled were illegally raised during the 1995 legislative session. Roach, a Mormon mother of five and a gun-rights advocate, had criticized West as the point man for the fund-raising campaign, and West had attacked Roach as a “royal pain.”

Their relationship grew uglier after two members of Roach’s staff quit in early 2003 and Roach hired a new aide, Kelly Hinton, to catch up on a four-month gap in her constituent e-mail.

Hinton accessed the former aides’ computers and found a long string of personal e-mails. Some of the e-mails were “gay stuff between my aide who’d left and the male aide of another senator,” Roach said.

West’s staff wasn’t involved in the e-mail exchange, which Roach reported to the secretary of the Senate, Milton Doumit Jr. But West, as Senate leader, was quick to react.

“All hell broke loose. West decided to come after me. He threatened me with the first Senate reprimand in 42 years,” Roach said.

A Senate lawyer working for the Republicans who asked for anonymity said West reacted simply because he was the Senate majority leader, and the e-mail flap occurred “on his watch.”

Roach retained Shawn Newman, an Olympia lawyer who had worked as nonpartisan staff in the House in the late 1980s. He ran for lieutenant governor in 1996 as a Reform Party candidate – the same year that West ran for lieutenant governor as a Republican.

Newman said he was astonished by West’s anger over the disclosure of the e-mails.

“I didn’t think this was going to be a big deal. But for West, it was a big deal. He came in with two staff attorneys and Doumit. He tried to bully Roach,” Newman said.

Doumit is now chief of staff for Attorney General Rob McKenna, a Republican who recently deferred to the FBI in an investigation of West’s conduct as Spokane’s mayor.

Doumit can’t talk to the press about the e-mail controversy because of his role in the attorney general’s office and his past employment by West in the Senate, said Greg Lane, McKenna’s communications director.

Unlike the House, where all staff e-mails are presumed to be public, the Senate has had a “longstanding policy” protecting private communications that predates Doumit’s and West’s tenure, Lane said. However, that does not mean that such e-mails are exempt from public disclosure, he said.

Hinton, who had worked as a Republican aide in the House, lost his job after discovering the e-mails.

“I became roadkill because I’d accessed these accounts,” Hinton said. “In the House, I’d been taught that anything you write is public, and I didn’t know what Senate protocols I’d violated,” he said.

Soon after the confrontational meeting between West and Roach, Hinton said he was escorted out of Roach’s office by Senate security guards. Roach said Hinton was ousted without her knowledge.

“They humiliated me beyond belief. The security guards I’d known for years were sorry but were following orders. Sen. West was behind this,” Hinton said.

Hinton was formally suspended for five days and wasn’t allowed to resume his job with Roach. He was then transferred to the Senate supply room – while still receiving the pay of a legislative aide.

“I was making $3,400 a month to hand out paper clips and rubber bands. I was really good at finding you the right-sized binder when you needed it,” Hinton said wryly. He stayed for the rest of the legislative session and then left Olympia. He’s now a political consultant in Vancouver, Wash., working solely for Republicans.

In March 2003, Hinton filed a complaint against West and Doumit, appealing his suspension and employment status and seeking whistleblower protection. The Senate leadership hired a Boise consultant, Jan Salisbury, to investigate.

West wasn’t interviewed because he was seriously ill with colon cancer. Roach declined to be interviewed, saying she “did not trust anyone in the Senate administration, including the selection process for the investigator,” according to Salisbury’s report.

The report says Hinton had been accused of inappropriate behavior in the House, including writing a negative letter about another Republican senator’s views under a fake name. Ten senators interviewed by Salisbury said they had “voiced apprehensions” to the Republican leadership about Hinton’s e-mail access and were “very alarmed and apprehensive” that he might look at their e-mail, the report says.

In September 2003, the Senate Facilities and Operations Committee dismissed Hinton’s complaint, saying he had inappropriately accessed the aides’ personal e-mail and his civil rights had not been violated by the job transfer.

West recused himself from the dismissal.