Pick for county commission chief executive delayed

Spokane County Commissioners Al French and Shelly O’Quinn say they’ve buried the hatchet that arose during a contentious ballot measure targeting taxes to expand public transportation.

“That was then, this is now. We’re fine,” French said Monday night, with O’Quinn nodding in agreement.

Their statement comes amid the pending decision to select the county’s next chief executive. Just months ago the two exchanged barbed emails and text messages that showed a relationship fraying in the heat of election season.

The two commissioners were expected to choose Marshall Farnell’s replacement as CEO on Monday, according to a calendar handed out earlier by the county’s Human Resources Department. But there has been no word whether sitting County Commissioner Todd Mielke, or former West Jordan, Utah, City Manager Richard Davis would take the job.

O’Quinn said the wait is due to the commissioners’ travel schedules and workload, not lingering animosity regarding the Spokane Transit Authority taxing issue.

Records obtained by The Spokesman-Review detail the conflict that publicly bubbled over earlier this year, prompted by the April tax measure to fund an STA expansion. French publicly lobbied for the tax, which was defeated by voters. O’Quinn and Mielke opposed the tax.

The dispute deepened when O’Quinn responded to an emailed request from STA’s clerk in November for the names of the two county commissioners who would be serving on the transit authority’s board of directors for 2015. O’Quinn responded, saying commissioners would appoint their two representatives to the board at a meeting in January, per custom.

French responded to that email with accusations that O’Quinn was speaking on behalf of the entire county commission.

“Once again you are making decisions for the Board WITHOUT the involvement of the rest of us,” French wrote Nov. 23. “We decide this as a group when it meets our needs. Remember you are but one of three no matter how inconvenient that is for you.”

O’Quinn responded in kind.

“Just so you know … before you got all high and mighty and huffy about that email, I sent it to let Jan know that we couldn’t meet her December 31st deadline, but it would be before the January meeting. I thought that was a common courtesy,” O’Quinn wrote to French an hour later.

She followed the email with a text to French’s personal cellphone saying she’d discussed the matter briefly with Mielke in the office and was told the county usually picked its STA representatives in January, following the installment of newly elected officials. French defeated Democrat Mary Lou Johnson in the November election for the Spokane County Commission seat.

Several months later, when French met with a state auditor, he said his two fellow commissioners were potentially violating the state’s Open Public Meetings Act by communicating with their personal cellphones. The allegation was repeated in a state audit report and prompted a request by The Spokesman-Review for all texts and phone call records between commissioners using their personal phones.

French, Mielke and O’Quinn provided their records to Jim Emacio, head civil attorney for the county. They were then released after Emacio removed “any text messages of a private nature” that are not public records, according to a letter provided with the records.

After a contentious STA board meeting in December, O’Quinn sent several texts to French requesting reconciliation.

“Now that we are past The STA vote … I would like to get together and see if we can hit the ‘reset’ button or call truce,” O’Quinn said in a Dec. 16 text to French. O’Quinn sent several similar texts in March, but those appeared to go unanswered. Both said Monday they were past the argument.

O’Quinn said the announcement naming Farnell’s successor could come as early as this week.

Meanwhile, former Spokane County Commissioner Bonnie Mager has asked for a formal investigation of the process to hire a new CEO, including leveling claims the county violated open public meetings laws and ethical standards. Spokane County Prosecutor Larry Haskell forwarded that request to the Washington Attorney General’s Office earlier this spring.