Changing Her Stand Sue Delucchi, A Staunch Supporter Of Incorporation, Used To Side Strongly With The Opposition

In 1985, Sue Delucchi stood defiantly before a hostile crowd in Otis Orchards and said she opposed forming a city in the Spokane Valley.

“I don’t have much to say except my husband and I moved out here to the Valley because we like the lifestyle that was afforded to us,” Delucchi told the state Boundary Review Board that September evening. “We do not want to be swallowed up by a city, whether it be the city of Spokane or this proposed city.”

Last month, the 16-year Valley resident got up in front of another crowd, this time at Bowdish Junior High School in the south Valley.

Again, incorporation was the topic, but Delucchi’s message was quite different.

“I now heartily endorse it as the best choice for the Spokane Valley,” she said.

One of Valley incorporation’s biggest critics has become one of its most strident champions. The decade-long transformation is dramatic and has left people on both sides of the issue asking why.

Consider:

Delucchi was co-chairwoman of the group Citizens for Facts on Incorporation in 1986, when the organization sued to keep the incorporation proposal from reaching the ballot.

In 1987, incorporation supporter Joe McKinnon sent a telegram to then Gov. Booth Gardner, asking him to reconsider his decision to appoint Delucchi to the county’s Boundary Review Board. McKinnon said he thought Delucchi was biased against incorporation.

As a member of that board in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, Delucchi twice voted to reject incorporation.

“I cannot, in good conscience, recommend that my friends and neighbors in the Valley vote for a proposal that would devastate services for the rest of the county and, in the long run, most likely increase taxes in the Valley,” she said in 1990, after she and three colleagues on the board voted against incorporation.

Then, late last year, Delucchi joined McKinnon and Howard Herman in Citizens for Valley Incorporation, the group leading the effort to form a city in the Valley. She became the group’s political consultant.

The move puzzled incorporation opponents.

“I really don’t know what has changed her mind,” said Dick Denenny, chairman of Concerned Citizens Against Valley Incorporation.

Pro-incorporation leaders don’t talk about Delucchi’s defection, except to say she isn’t being paid.

Delucchi, a longtime civic activist, said this week that it’s not hard to figure out her flip-flop.

The incorporation proposal has changed this time around, she said.

For starters, Spokane County government officials have been much more cooperative during the latest campaign than they ever have been, Delucchi said.

In the past, county leaders resisted incorporation, saying it would drain county coffers and have a negative impact on the remaining unincorporated areas. Past studies of incorporation found that the county stood to lose at least $10 million in tax revenue if a Valley city was formed.

Concerned Citizens Against Valley Incorporation contends that’s still the case. But county officials have been quiet, which is probably a reflection of the makeup of the Board of County Commissioners.

Commissioner Steve Hasson supports incorporation and has hinted that he might run for mayor of the Valley city. He also has contributed $150 to Citizens for Valley Incorporation this year.

Commissioner Phil Harris says he will do nothing to hinder or support the incorporation cause but has vowed to support the new city if it forms. He served as auctioneer at a Citizens for Valley Incorporation function Thursday night.

Harris has said he would do the same for opponents.

Commissioner Skip Chilberg, who has expressed concern about incorporation, is resigning at the end of the month to take a job on a state board. Pat Mummey, a vocal opponent of the measure when she was a commissioner, is no longer on the board.

Also, Delucchi said, she thinks fiscal forecasts for the proposed city are much more favorable this time.

In 1990, a study estimated that about $22.5 million was raised within the boundaries of the proposed city in property, sales and shared state taxes - not nearly enough to run a city of 73,000. Last year, that figure was put at about $21 million.

This year, the Boundary Review Board estimates that nearly $31 million is raised in taxes in the Valley. That money would be available to a city government should incorporation pass May 16.

“The numbers weren’t there until now,” Delucchi said. “The sales tax has increased so greatly that the revenue base is enhanced. It’s doable now.”

Many dispute that as well.

The city of Federal Way, Wash., which Valley incorporation supporters point to as a model of efficiency, plans to spend nearly $58 million this year - $27 million more than the incorporation supporters have earmarked as revenue.

To Delucchi, there’s something else, maybe more important than the rest. There’s the question of representation, she said.

The Valley currently has no specific seats on county boards, including the Spokane Transit Authority and the county’s Growth Management Steering Committee.

Delucchi said that’s a travesty, considering the Valley’s population and unique needs.

She told about a friend who takes the bus from his home near Eighth and Adams to Liberty Lake and has to go to downtown Spokane first.

“That’s not right,” Delucchi said. “Part of the reason is we haven’t had a Valley perspective on many of these boards.” If Valley voters decided to incorporate, they’ll get seats on those boards.

Some opponents claim that incorporation will divide the greater community and make it harder to solve regional problems - like unreasonable STA route.

But Delucchi, once a supporter of some kind of consolidated government, said she doesn’t think that’s the case anymore.

“Nobody’s talking about erecting walls around the new city,” she said. “It doesn’t mean we can’t talk about regional issues. Valley people are just as concerned about regional issues as anybody else.”