West likely to resign from boy’s ranch board

Spokane Mayor Jim West, facing accusations of using positions of public trust to develop sexual relations with young men, resigned Thursday from the executive board of the Inland Northwest Council of the Boy Scouts.

The 54-year-old mayor, who faces allegations he abused two young boys in the late 1970s, also is expected to resign today from the Morning Star Boy’s Ranch board of directors.

“What I believe is that Jim West is going to tell us he’s going to step down,” said P.J. Watters, public relations and funding director for Morning Star.

The state-licensed facility on the South Hill is home for 18 boys from troubled backgrounds. It also has another transitional residential facility for five young men.

West, who has been on Morning Star’s board of directors for 12 years, likely will offer his resignation when he meets today with the Rev. Joe Weitensteiner, who was out of town on Thursday, Watters said.

The facility’s board president, Bob Durgan, a retired Spokane banking executive, would not answer questions Thursday.

West has been an “excellent contributing member of the board,” and had no direct contact with the facility’s boys, Watters said.

The mayor made no mention of the resignations Thursday when he briefly appeared before reporters to read a statement. He refused to answer questions.

The day the allegations against him made news across the country, West said he had no intention of resigning as mayor.

But two prominent community leaders, City Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers and long-time Republican activist Shaun Cross, called on West to resign.

“The mayor should step down and resign, immediately,” Cross said. “There’s no way, given the gravity of the allegations and his admission of Internet activity, that he can effectively lead the city.”

Cross, a conservative Republican who ran for Congress in 2004, is a partner with Paine Hamblen Coffin Brooke & Miller, the largest law firm in Spokane.

“I think it’s a sad day for Spokane and a sad day for Jim West,” he said. “I hope he can get the help he needs.”

Cross said he was speaking for himself and not on behalf of any clients.

“I think he should step down,” Rodgers said. “He can’t survive as mayor.”

Sen. Bob McCaslin, a longtime Republican colleague of West’s in the state Senate, disagreed. McCaslin said West has been effective as mayor.

“Let’s say he is gay. If he’s a good mayor, he should continue. On (charges of) pedophilia, that should have to be proved in court,” said McCaslin, who added he was shocked by the newspaper’s stories on Thursday.

“I wasn’t expecting it. I pick up the paper and the whole front page is Jim West,” McCaslin said.

Meanwhile, Boy Scout executive Tim McCandless said West called the Inland Northwest Council office of the Boy Scouts of America Thursday morning.

West, who’s been affiliated with scouting for at least 30 years, had to resign or his registration would have been revoked automatically because of the sexual abuse allegations, McCandless said.

“The national policy is the Boy Scouts does not recognize as volunteer leaders avowed homosexuals,” McCandless said.

West admitted in an interview Wednesday with The Spokesman-Review that he has regularly visited a gay Internet chat room where he has talked with young men.

He enticed one of them to go on a date with the promise of a ride in his Lexus convertible and offered gifts and a City Hall internship to another 18-year-old who turned out to be a fictional teen created by a consultant working for the newspaper.

West said he doesn’t consider himself gay, but he didn’t argue with the label “bisexual.”

McCandless said West’s admissions about his private life violate the Boy Scouts policy.

“He knows when there have been accusations of abuse, the Boy Scouts immediately revoke the registration or membership,” McCandless said.

In the mid-1970s, West was a Scout leader with David Hahn, a fellow sheriff’s deputy who was accused of molesting several boys, including some at the Scout camp at Diamond Lake. Hahn killed himself in 1981 amid allegations of pedophilia.

Hahn’s alleged abuse resulted in a pending lawsuit naming only Spokane County, not the Boy Scouts or West. In the lawsuit, Rob Galliher, his older brother Brett and two other men claim Hahn sexually molested them during the mid-‘70s and early 1980s. Galliher told the newspaper that he also accused West of sexually abusing him when he answered questions posed by county attorneys for a deposition.

West on Wednesday called the allegations “flat lies.”

The local Scout council is being sued in a separate suit, now stalled in a bankruptcy proceeding, involving allegations of abuse by another Scout leader, George Robey, who committed suicide in 1982 and knew West, Hahn and Patrick O’Donnell, a confessed pedophile and former priest.

West briefly worked in the early 1990s as an endowment director of the Inland Northwest Council, and has been on its policy-setting executive council for several years.

Spokane Republicans expressed shock at the stories involving West.

John Moyer, a former state senator and a retired Spokane doctor, said he’s saddened by the accusations.

“That’s tragic. I just feel so bad for him,” Moyer said on Thursday. “He’s been exemplary in his job as mayor. If this hadn’t come up, I would have felt very proud of him,” Moyer said.

West’s private life was rumored but never directly discussed by state Senate Republicans, Moyer said.

“It never came up in the caucus meetings,” he added. “What you’ve uncovered has come out of the darkness,” Moyer added.

The allegations against West are reverberating across the state, said Sen. Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, Senate majority leader in the recent legislative session. It’s a job West held in 2003, when he decided to run for election as Spokane mayor.

“What an earthquake has erupted here,” Brown said on Thursday.

West’s sexual orientation is not the issue, Brown said. Rather, “allegations of a pattern of abuse of power and possible unethical conduct by the mayor are deeply troubling,” she said.

The courts will have to resolve any sexual molestation allegations, Brown said. If the allegations stick, “he needs to step down as mayor,” she said.

The other issues outlined in the newspaper’s stories, including offering a City Hall internship, gifts and trips to young men, “raises significant ethical issues,” Brown said. “I think the public’s trust is going to be eroded by some of the things they are learning,” she said.

The state Republican Party chairman and his predecessor on Thursday took pains to distance the party from the allegations.

“I don’t see that the bad choices an individual makes – or the criminal behavior an individual chooses – reflect on the party he happens to belong to,” said former GOP chairman Don Benton, now a state senator.

“This obviously is a huge story that has rocked the political world,” said current COP chair Chris Vance. “But this issue is now between Jim West and the people of Spokane.”

What about West’s gubernatorial aspirations?

“That will be dependent upon how this episode plays itself out,” Vance said.

Both Vance and Benton said they’d heard rumors and speculation that West might be gay.

“The Republican Party is made up of individuals with individual private lives,” Vance said. “And your private life can be separate from your public life.”

“There have always been rumors, but in the political world there are always rumors about everything,” said Benton. “The rumors weren’t about kids or boys, they were about sexual orientation.”

Benton said he was stunned by the allegations published Thursday.

“I’m shocked, disgusted,” he said. “This isn’t about being homosexual…This is about predatory behavior.”

Both he and Vance said they don’t think the allegations against a longtime Republican standard-bearer will undermine the party’s family-values reputation.

“I think voters understand that the actions of a single individual don’t reflect on the party generally,” Vance said.

The Republican Party will not rally for West, said Sen. Pam Roach, a West Side Republican who frequently clashed with West when he was Senate majority leader.

“It would be a blessing for the people of Spokane if he’d resign. Several people I’ve talked to seem to think he’ll hang in there as long as he can get his health benefits and his paycheck,” Roach said.

In a Wednesday night interview and a press statement on Thursday, West flatly denied abusing any boys or having sexual relations with anyone under 18. But he has acknowledged his conversations on Gay.com, saying they are part of his private life.

West also told the newspaper he doesn’t consider his offer of a City Hall internship, sports memorabilia and trips to sports events and Washington, D.C., to someone he believed was an 18-year old an abuse of his public office.

At the Spokane County Courthouse, commissioners Phil Harris and Mark Richard said they couldn’t discuss the pending lawsuit involving Hahn.

“I’m going to be briefed today about this case by our attorney,” Richard said. “One of the questions I have is why we weren’t apprised of this before now. I read about it in the newspaper.”

In contrast, Harris, a former Boy Scout executive, said he had been briefed on the lawsuit already, and that was why he couldn’t comment.

Commissioner Todd Mielke, who worked as a legislative assistant for West for five years, said he was “shocked and surprised” when he read Thursday’s newspaper.

“It’s a side of him I knew nothing about,” said Mielke, who was a West roommate during legislative sessions in Olympia. “I spent more time with him during a five-year period than probably anybody else.”

“It has been as much of a surprise to me as any of his other friends,” Mielke said. “I still respect Jim West, and I still consider him a friend.”

Former state Rep. Dick Bond, R-Spokane, who was instrumental in getting West and Hahn appointed the first non-father co-leaders of Scout Troop 345 at Hamblen School in the late 1970s, criticized the newspaper’s coverage.

“The only purpose of this is to destroy Jim West,” Bond said when contacted Thursday. “It’s painful to read,” the former conservative legislator said.

“The Cowles (family) did this only to destroy him and for no other good reason,” he said.

The Cowles family owns The Spokesman-Review, which endorsed West in his bid to be mayor, as well as previous elections for the Legislature.

Some members of the Spokane community expressed shock Thursday about the allegations against West.

Diana Nicklaus, a mother of five, said she was saddened by the allegations of child molestation and angry that some city officials suggested Thursday that they could be balanced out by progress the city has made under West.

“I looked up to Jim West,” Nicklaus said. “I think he’s an intelligent man who has good ideas in city government. But these are serious things. I am so tired of our kids (being) low on the totem pole.”

Spokane resident Pat Kiem said if the allegations of molestation are true, West “is sick.”

“I feel sorry for the man, he does need help,” Kiem said. But he should also forget about any plans to run for governor, and resign his post as mayor, she added.

“I would like to have a recall or a petition to sign,” Kiem said.

Valley resident Dan Allison said he has always considered West “a stand-up guy.” That doesn’t mean he condones what West has been accused of doing, if the allegations are true. He has his doubts because he feels some of the newspaper’s coverage on other issues, such as the River Park Square controversy, has been slanted.

“Stick to the straight facts, nothing else,” Allison said. “This is going to devastate the city of Spokane,” he said.

William Hall, a disabled veteran living in north Spokane, said he voted for West for mayor and was disturbed by the discrepancy between West’s private life and his opposition to gay rights anti-discrimination laws.

“I think it’s outright hypocritical to carry on a gay relationship while supporting anti-gay bills,” Hall said. “I don’t agree with the gay lifestyle personally. But don’t hide it,” Hall said.