Spokane Valley council won’t investigate Mike Jackson’s firing

Bill Gothmann presented a motion at Tuesday’s Spokane Valley City Council meeting calling for an independent investigation into the firing of former city manager Mike Jackson.

The motion failed to get a second and died without any council discussion.

Gothmann is one of three council members who said they were excluded from council business and meetings leading up to Jackson’s firing. The other two, Dean Grafos and Chuck Haffner, have resigned from the council since Jackson’s departure.

For a second it looked like that would be the end of the discussion, but then Spokane Valley resident Marc Mims stood up and asked if public comment would still be allowed. After a short conversation, city attorney Cary Driskell gave the go-ahead for comments.

Mims said he’d come prepared to encourage the council to vote for an investigation.

“To any reasonable person it looks like something may not have gone right,” Mims said, “and now nearly half a million has been spent wastefully and unnecessarily,” referring to the council’s vote to give Jackson a $411,000 severance package. Mims added that a vote against an investigation will look like a cover-up.

“Please do the responsible thing and authorize the investigation and restore some trust in the Valley,” Mims said.

Former Councilman Grafos then asked the council what it was covering up.

“We were told we couldn’t have an investigation because the Jackson issue wasn’t settled,” Grafos said. “It’s settled now. Let’s have the investigation.”

Spokane Valley residents Scott Maclay and Nina Fluegal both supported the council’s decision to not investigate Jackson’s dismissal.

Maclay, who champions the formation of an independent law enforcement oversight board in Spokane Valley, said that if such an oversight board existed it could have investigated the process that led to Jackson’s firing.

Fluegal encouraged the council to “stay straight” and keep going without looking back.

Gothmann, whose temporary term on the council ends in June, said after the meeting that he was surprised the investigation even made the agenda.

“They respected me enough to put it on there, I guess,” Gothmann said. He maintains that the firing of Jackson was completely legal and within the council’s authority.

“It’s the process the citizens have a right to know about,” Gothmann said. “They have a right to know whether the process was legal.”