Eugster asks court to halt recall of Mayor West

Former Spokane City Councilman Steve Eugster is seeking a court order to stop the process that could lead to the recall of Mayor Jim West.

Eugster filed a request Thursday for an order blocking the Spokane County elections office from validating signatures on petitions filed Wednesday by recall supporters. An attorney who heads the group Coalition for a New Spokane, Eugster says the signatures weren’t properly gathered because the state Supreme Court has not published an opinion to support its Aug. 24 ruling that the ballot language on the recall proposal meets legal standards.

“The question is whether the signatures were gathered in a timely manner,” he said in an interview.

A judge should tell county elections officials “to cease any activities to validate the signatures” or to treat those signatures as invalid, he says in a request for writ of mandamus that names county Auditor Vicky Dalton, who is the county’s chief elections official, as well as recall author Shannon Sullivan and West.

Spokane County Superior Court Judge Linda Tompkins said Thursday the request for an injunction raises questions about jurisdictional issues.

“We take this very seriously,” said Tompkins, who currently serves as the court’s presiding judge. But because the case is requesting action against an elected county official and other county staff, a visiting judge will be brought in to hear the arguments, she said.

A visiting judge also handled the initial hearings on the recall.

Court administrator Dave Hardy said late Thursday that his staff had not yet arranged for a visiting judge for this recent case. That judge will set a schedule for a hearing.

Although the signatures were turned in Wednesday, Dalton said elections staff won’t start checking signatures until Monday, to comply with a state requirement that West receive notice of the process.

Although West is named as a defendant in the request for an injunction, Eugster says in the motion that he supported and voted for West in the 2003 mayoral election.

West said Thursday that Eugster seems to be raising “an interesting legal argument,” but that it was not part of the strategy his attorneys were pursuing. His team of lawyers raised the legal issues they thought were important in previous court hearings.

“We’ll just look and see how it plays out,” West said. “We’re now focused on the campaign. We’re prepared to go forward and get this behind us.”

Recall supporters turned in petitions with 17,121 signatures, and need at least 12,567 of those to be from registered city voters to get the issue on the ballot. If there are enough signatures, Dalton has estimated the recall issue will be decided in a special election Nov. 29.