Bid For Spokane Voice On Scapca Defeated Lawmaker Cites Lack Of Request From Spokane City Council To End Election Of City’s Representative By Small Town’s Mayors

A bid to strengthen Spokane’s right to choose its clean air board representative was defeated in the last hours of the Legislature.

While grass growers and rural mayors opposed the amendment to the Clean Air Act proposed by Sen. Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, members of the Spokane City Council failed to support it.

The measure could have made City Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers the board chairwoman of the Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority this year.

“We had no request from Spokane’s local government to pass it,” said Sen. Bob Morton, R-Orient, a member of the conference committee that rejected Brown’s amendment.

Assistant City Manager Dave Mandyke, who lobbies for Spokane in Olympia, said he informally polled several council members on the issue, but not Rodgers.

“They gave me no direction to pursue the amendment. They knew that clean air groups were for it, and they were aware it was failing,” he said.

“It just wasn’t on our legislative agenda,” said City Councilwoman Phyllis Holmes.

Now, ex-councilman and bluegrass burning advocate Mike Brewer - the choice of the county’s rural mayors for the SCAPCA post - will have a four-year term representing Spokane.

Mayor John Talbott supported the amendment. But he was powerless without the support of the council, he said Thursday.

“This is really wrong, but I can do nothing about it,” Talbott said.

Brown wanted to amend a section of the state Clean Air Act that lets Spokane County’s rural towns vote on the Spokane seat on the five-member SCAPCA board.

The county’s 10 small towns used that power in a Feb. 23 election.

They rejected Rodgers, a clean-air activist, and chose Brewer, who opposes a statewide bluegrass burning ban.

This week, a frustrated Brown accused her Republican colleagues on a House-Senate conference committee of “simply caving to grass interests.”

“I plan to come back with this issue next year,” Brown said. “It’s an important representation issue for the city of Spokane.”

Morton, Sen. Eugene Prince, R-Thornton, and Rep. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, all voted against Brown’s amendment.

No Spokane representative was appointed to the conference committee. Schoesler, point man for the lobbying that defeated the amendment, didn’t return phone calls this week.

Sen. Karen Fraser, D-Olympia, the former chairwoman of the Senate Ecology Committee, fought for Brown’s amendment in the committee.

“There was a lot of reference to the grass-burning issue in the conference committee. But this is a democracy issue,” said Fraser, the former mayor of Lacey and a former Thurston County Commissioner.

“This is very strange. With this law, the voters of Spokane are being denied their right to political accountability,” she said.

Talbott recently brought the issue before other council members, but they were concerned the amendment might look like a “repudiation” of the county’s small towns, Holmes said.

The public’s interest in clean air has been sacrificed, said Patricia Hoffman of Save Our Summers, an anti-grassburning group.

“We are appalled that grass growers and the City Council conspired against this,” Hoffman said.

Brown attached her amendment to a vehicle emissions bill that passed both houses. The bill’s main sponsor got the Spokane amendment dropped from the House version.

“There needs to be a hearing in Olympia next session on the Spokane situation. To resolve it this way would not have been good legislating,” said Rep. John Pennington, R-Woodland.

, DataTimes