Spokane7
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March 16, 2010 in City
U.S. attorney nominee has long felt called to the law
Ormsby has Obama’s nod, but pick has critics as well
Mike Ormsby “I love what I do … and the opportunity you have to make a difference every day.”
(Full-size photo)
Mike Ormsby can blame his godfather if the U.S. Senate confirms him as the next U.S. attorney for Eastern Washington.
At age 11, Ormsby got worked up over something he viewed as unfair. He then spoke to his godfather, the late Mike Hemovich, about his work as a criminal defense attorney.
Hemovich “told me what a noble calling being a lawyer was,” Ormsby said. “He said you are in a position to help people in a number of ways as long as you were willing to listen to their issues and problems. I was hooked. From that point forward, I was going to college and law school to become an attorney.”
Ormsby, whose practice mostly includes public finance and municipal law, granted an interview to The Spokesman-Review last week before he learned of an e-mail from the U.S. Justice Department admonishing him against making any comments until after his confirmation hearing. That hearing, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, has not yet been scheduled.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., recommended Ormsby to replace U.S. Attorney James McDevitt more than a year ago. Just recently, President Barack Obama nominated Ormsby to the post, which mostly involves supervising criminal and civil prosecutors who handle federal cases in U.S. District Court.
“Mike has a vast knowledge of the law and of the communities he will be serving,” Murray said this week. “He is well-qualified to be the next U.S. attorney for Eastern Washington.”
McDevitt said Murray couldn’t have picked a better candidate.
“Mike’s ethics are at the highest level,” McDevitt said. “He’s just a stand-up, quality guy.”
McDevitt added: “I would trust Mike with everything but my vote,” a minor dig to Ormsby’s longstanding Democratic leanings.
But the selection has generated letters of protest from some in the community who have laid a good portion of the River Park Square legal tangle at his feet. Former Spokane Mayor John Talbott and other critics of the public-private partnership last year sent a letter to the White House and members of Congress saying they believe Ormsby is the wrong person for the job because of his involvement in the controversial project involving the city and Cowles Co. development interests. River Park Square is an affiliate of Cowles Co., which publishes The Spokesman-Review.
In the 1990s, Ormsby was the attorney for the Spokane Downtown Foundation, a nonprofit organization set up to sell bonds to purchase the River Park Square parking garage and pay investors back with proceeds from the city’s parking revenue.
“At a time when it’s vital that the Justice Department send a message that it will not tolerate private fraud and public corruption, Mr. Ormsby’s appointment would send the opposite message,” the critics wrote in a five-page letter that claimed the transaction was rife with fraud.
When the Talbott letter was sent in March 2009, Ormsby called it an “effort to demonize me as part of this project.”
In the interview last week, Ormsby said he doesn’t hold a grudge against those who sent the letter. “The project happened and it’s now behind us,” Ormsby said. “I guess I’ve let it go and tried not to think about it much. I understand that people develop very, very strong feelings about an issue. I may not agree with them, but I certainly respect … the vehemence in the way they hold their views and their rights to express their views.”
Ormsby’s firm, K & L Gates, eventually settled a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service that he and another attorney did not perform “due diligence” necessary before bonds were sold to investors. The firm paid $1.4 million in fees and taxes assessed by the IRS as part of its settlement with the city.
Asked about that settlement with the IRS, Ormsby said: “That litigation is now resolved. I really don’t want to comment on it any further.”
Former City Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers, one of the people who signed the letter, said she believes it’s fair to judge a person’s career on a couple of transactions.
“It speaks to someone’s integrity,” Rodgers said. “That was a major deal for the city of Spokane. Every dime of parking meter money used to go to … police and fire and streets. Now it goes to paying off those bonds.”
Current U.S. Attorney McDevitt, who worked at the same firm as Ormsby before being selected to the post by former President George W. Bush, said it’s clear mistakes were made in the River Park Square project. “But stupid decisions don’t make a crime.”
Upon request from Talbott and others, McDevitt asked his counterparts in Western Washington to review the project’s records; they announced in September 2008 that they could find no instances of fraud or any criminal activity.
Friends and colleagues call Ormsby a hard worker who has always put his extensive family before political aspirations.
Those started at the ripe age of 18, when Ormsby became the youngest-ever member of the Spokane School Board.
“It was a great experience,” he said. “It was one of the best lessons about how to disagree with people but do it agreeably.”
The oldest of eight boys, including State Rep. Timm Ormsby, D-Spokane, Ormsby served on the school board through college and law school at Gonzaga.
“I moved six blocks to live in a dorm in Gonzaga,” he said. “And my first house was three blocks from the dorm. I’m a public affairs and political junkie. I’m fascinated by it. The best way to satisfy that is to spend time with other people.”
Former Spokane Mayor Jack Geraghty has known the 53-year-old Ormsby for more than 30 years. At one time, many believed Ormsby was being groomed to take the place of former U.S. Speaker of the House Tom Foley.
“That didn’t happen,” Geraghty said. “In the meantime he built an important and highly respected law practice. He’s just an outstanding person.”
Ormsby acknowledged that the pull of politics almost uprooted him from Spokane.
“I certainly was interested in elective public office early in my career. Then our kids came along and my wife and I had a very candid conversation about my priorities,” he said. “I talked to one of my friends who missed the first four or five years of his son’s life. To me, that’s too high a price to pay.”
Instead, he contributes to most major Democratic campaigns and has helped support candidates for local offices. Since 1997, he’s contributed more than $11,000 to dozens of races, elections records show.
Ormsby has served as the president of the Spokane County Bar Association, on the board of trustees at Eastern Washington University, the Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce and the State Advisory Committee for the state Department of Social and Health Services, to name a few.
Todd Woodard, the spokesman for Spokane International Airport, worked with Ormsby’s late brother, Pat, under Foley. Mike Ormsby currently serves as attorney for the airport’s board.
“It’s not uncommon to get an e-mail from Mike at 4 or 5 a.m. or 8 or 9 p.m. He just never stops. He’s that kind of dedicated person,” Woodard said. “If you approach him with a question, he doesn’t just tell you what you want to hear. He tells you what you need to hear. He’s a gentleman of impeccable integrity.”
Those late hours are something Ormsby said his wife, Jeanette, who teaches in the West Valley School District, hopes will change.
“Unfortunately, I probably spend more time in the office than I should,” he said. “But I love what I do … and the opportunity you have to make a difference every day.”
Closing Geiger: Wise or worrisome? 
CharlesBillford on March 16 at 12:28 a.m.
He has the “taint” of Murray on him.
Next candidate. Please.
Ron_the_Cop on March 16 at 2:29 a.m.
Mr. Clouse,
You did mention the IRS report which lambasted everyone involved in the RPS scandal when it disallowed the tax-exempt status of the first RPS bonds. What you didn’t mention was what the IRS had to say about Mr. Ormsby. How come? It’s in the comment thread to Mr. Camden’s other puff piece:
“This is the same Michael Ormsby that the IRS took the unprecedented action of castigating publicly in implicating him in the RPS bond fraud as reported in Bond Buyer for, “… incompetence and disreputable conduct.” The Bond Buyer mistakenly reported though that the tax-exempt status of the RPS bonds was preserved in this settlement. In fact the tax-exempt status was disallowed and the IRS got its back taxes of … through a secret deal with Preston & Gates.]”
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2010/mar/04/ormsby-chosen-as-us-attorney/?comments#c124633
WillyPeter on March 16 at 6:35 a.m.
There are many judges who are so internally tainted with political ideaology that they can never be trusted to render honest, objective and fair decisions. Ormsby has cleary proven, in spite of himself, that he’ll fit right in with these yahoos.
D Statler on March 16 at 7:22 a.m.
The way things were handled at RPS were obviously wrong. I would like to say that the vision of that project alone, coupled with RiverFront Park have revitalized that whole area of the city.When the bonds are all paid.We will still have another centerplace for buisness at the city’s center.We all know that Spokane needed that shot in the arm.
Furthermore,I have the chance to work with some of the Ormsby family. If the apples don’t fall too far from the tree.I must say that the Ormsby parents must be very special people.Their children give unselfishly to serving the public and our KIDS !! :^) ThankYou
liarsinnews on March 16 at 8:55 a.m.
Re, his “GODFATHER”. Per se? Makes one wonder.
Ron_the_Cop on March 16 at 9:10 a.m.
Mr. Clouse,
I gather you haven’t read the other comment threads re Mr. Ormsby’s nomination. Award winning investigative reporter Larry Shook who has followed the River Park Square bond frauds from day one, had this to say about Mr. Ormsby’s nomination recently in response to the controversy no swirling around Co Assessor Ralph Baker:
… I have long suspected this is one of many loose threads hanging from Spokane’s tapestry of corruption. There are many such threads, in my view: aspects of Expo 74 (what toxins are buried in the ground beneath River Front Park?), the incinerator, the Valley Sewer project, the effective annexation of the alarming taxing authority of the Public Facilities District by downtown property interests (please see “All the Usual Experts,” on the Camas magazine cite, http://www.camasmagazine.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?aid=149), the new Spokane Convention Center, etc. I think many such threads hang from Spokane’s tattered public corruption tapestry.
As a journalist who has covered Spokane for 33 years, I have seen that the tactic of Spokane’s public corruption predators has always been to intimidate anyone who would have the temerity to start pulling on those threads. Any real investigation—criminal or civil—that starts tugging is likely to unravel the whole tapestry pretty quickly, I believe. I think corrupt fortunes would be seriously damaged by that effort, corrupt careers destroyed, and the public made, at least partially, whole from this decades-long theft. I also think the IRS understood, and expressed, a great deal about Spokane’s plight in its report ruling against the RPS bonds. (Please see “The Casino was Rigged” at Camas, http://www.camasmagazine.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?aid=189.)
Ask yourself what kind of influence prevented an appropriate follow up criminal investigation into those findings and I think you will understand not only the nature of the corruption but also the extent to which it infects bodies politic all the way to the White House. To understand the virulence of that corruption, ask yourself how the Obama Administration could be so incompetent or outright indifferent to law and evidence as to replace one key player in the RPS fraud with another as U.S. attorney for Eastern Washington. (Please see “Protesting Ormsby” on Camas, http://www.camasmagazine.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?aid=216;see also “McDevitt’s Fingerprints,” http://www.camasmagazine.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?aid=203. See, too, other Camas reporting about McDevitt.)
The question in my mind is how long the public will tolerate this condition. My view is that this corruption is so serious that if the American people do not destroy it, it will destroy them. “How do you mediate fraud?” former Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers once famously asked former Washington Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard Guy. (Please see “Judge Guy Meets Cherie Rodgers” on Camas, http://www.camasmagazine.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?aid=76.) I think we all know the answer: one mediates fraud in the same way one bargains with terrorists. You don’t, unless you want to perpetuate it. Thank you for your citizenship. The community and nation are indebted to you.
Sincerely,
Larry Shook