County Won’t Hire Olympia Lobbyist Now

Spokane County’s off-and-on attempt to hire an Olympia lobbyist is off again. For good this year.

Commissioners decided to forgo a legislative advocate for the current session because they didn’t budget for one.

However, they agreed to set aside up to $20,000 for a lobbyist for the 1997 legislative session and to seek proposals Oct. 1. A lobbyist is to be hired by Dec. 1.

“I think we got off to a bad start,” Commissioner Steve Hasson said at Tuesday’s meeting. “We didn’t budget for it. It was an afterthought, a comedy of errors.”

Hasson had pushed fellow commissioners Phil Harris and John Roskelley to hire a Hasson friend and former state legislator, Bill Day of Spokane. But Day’s application during the first search in November came in after the deadline.

Roskelley opposed the hiring and Hasson dropped it after urging unanimous approval to remove any perception of conflict of interest.

A more recent search netted applications from Day, former Spokane County lobbyist Randy Scott of Olympia and five others.

Bids ranged from $5,960 to $13,600.

Among the applicants was Gordon Golob, former secretary of the state Senate who was fined $1,000 by the state Public Disclosure Commission in 1994.

Although Golob ultimately was cleared of wrongdoing by a state ethics panel, the commission penalized him for failing to disclose about $400,000 worth of state grants on financial disclosure forms.

Golob recently was the top legal adviser to the Senate Republican Caucus.

, DataTimes