Briefs filed to support Spokane mayor recall vote

OLYMPIA – With five days to go before the state’s highest court considers whether Spokane Mayor Jim West will face a citywide recall election, several local attorneys have filed friend-of-the-court briefs arguing in favor of such a vote.

One brief, as expected, comes from Mark Hodgson and Brant Stevens, two of the Spokane lawyers advising recall organizer Shannon Sullivan. The other brief comes from the Neighborhood Alliance of Spokane County, an association of neighborhood groups.

“We decided to step up to the plate,” said Bonnie Mager, the group’s executive director. The alliance has taken no position on whether West should be booted out of office, she said, but felt that citizens should have a say in the matter.

“The interesting thing about a recall election is that the voters are the jury,” said Breean Beggs, director of the Center for Justice, a nonprofit law firm in Spokane that’s representing the neighborhood group. With Spokane’s new “strong mayor” system of city government, he said, a recall vote is the only effective way for citizens to get their say on whether West should stay or go.

Sullivan said West abused his office by offering an internship to a person he was flirting with in an online chat room. She also cited West’s appointment of a young gay man to the city’s human rights commission – a man who said West later offered him $300 to swim naked in a pool.

West’s attorneys are trying to quash the recall attempt, saying that Sullivan was spurred by The Spokesman-Review’s “invasive surveillance and contrived evidence.” Since May, the newspaper has extensively reported allegations of sexual misconduct by West. The person who West thought was an 18-year-old gay high school student was in fact a forensic computer expert hired by The Spokesman-Review to confirm a real young man’s report that he’d met West on a gay chat line and later had consensual sex.

West’s private conversations can’t be the basis for a recall election, his lawyers say. Nor did West do anything wrong by inviting a person to apply for a short-term, unpaid city internship. West, a 54-year-old longtime state legislator who became mayor last year, said he’s mentored hundreds of young people.

West’s response to the two friend-of-the-court briefs is due today.

In the neighborhood association brief, Beggs argued that Sullivan’s petition for a recall election is sufficient to trigger the vote.

“There is no evidence that Ms. Sullivan’s purpose in filing the recall petition is to harass Mayor West or interfere with the performance of his elective duties,” Beggs wrote to the high court. Sullivan simply wants to let voters decide “whether the charges of offering city internships for social advantage” as described in the newspaper’s stories are true, and whether they justify West’s ouster. Beggs said that under city law, the mayor cannot benefit – financially, socially or sexually – from the offer of a city position, including an unpaid internship.

The Supreme Court doesn’t have to decide whether the allegations are true. A recall vote can occur simply if the alleged acts violate the law.

Sullivan, a single mother with no formal legal training, has been doing mock debates with her attorney advisers to prepare for her appearance before the nine justices. It’s highly unusual, but not unheard of, for a non-attorney to argue a case before the high court. Sullivan said she will likely cede some of her allotted 20 minutes to Hodgson and to her lawyer, Jerry Davis.

“I will be doing the opening arguments,” she said. “The truth is on my side, and so is the law.”