County backs whistle-blower

Spokane County “whistle-blower” Bruce Hunt was right about several allegations against his Building and Planning Department superiors, county commissioners said Wednesday.

They said Hunt, a county planner, correctly pointed out in a legally protected complaint to commissioners in December that Building and Planning Director Jim Manson improperly granted a zone change by ordering a comprehensive plan map be redrawn.

And Manson improperly authorized a day-care center in the crash zone of a future Spokane International Airport runway, commissioners said in a written decision.

Also, commissioners said, senior managers in the Building and Planning Department improperly gave the appearance of favoritism when one of them got another to approve a building permit that members of their staff refused to sign on grounds that it would violate the zoning code.

But they disagreed with an investigative committee that Manson improperly granted a 5 1/2-month extension to a nonrenewable six-month permit for a rock-crushing operation. They said the zoning code is ambiguous, and Manson properly made an allowance for unavoidable delays that prevented any rock crushing during most of the permit’s duration.

Commissioners said they intend to make such an extension clearly legal in the future.

They also vowed to make sure the mistakes they found don’t happen again, but made no decision on whether to discipline Manson or two of his assistant directors, Pam Knutsen and Mark Holman.

Efforts to reach Manson, Knutsen and Holman Wednesday evening were unsuccessful.

The commissioners’ investigative committee was unable to determine whether a 1,200-square-foot “housekeeping unit” Knutsen wanted to tack onto her Newman Lake home was an impermissible “accessory dwelling” or a permissible “addition” to her home.

The committee was composed of Spokane County Human Resources Director Cathy Malzahn, human resources analyst Carol McVicker and Lloyd Nickel, Stevens County’s chief civil deputy prosecutor.

County commissioners were similarly perplexed about the legality of the building permit, but agreed with the committee that there was an appearance of impropriety when Holman signed Knutsen’s building permit after planners refused to bless it.

The committee correctly dismissed two of Hunt’s whistle-blower allegations as unfounded and one as not a proper subject for a whistle-blower complaint, commissioners ruled.

They agreed that Manson properly refunded money to a developer as part of a negotiated settlement and did nothing wrong in ordering a planner to rewrite a report.

Also, commissioners said, the committee properly refused to consider Hunt’s allegation that Manson and former County Commissioner Phil Harris improperly arranged a job for one of Harris’ sons.

Commissioner Bonnie Mager said she expects to take up the issue of discipline next week, when Commissioners Mark Richard and Todd Mielke are back from an economic-development lobbying trip this week to Washington, D.C., with other local elected officials and business representatives.

Richard and Mielke, who participated in Wednesday’s decision via speaker phone, said discipline hasn’t been ruled out. But they viewed the improper actions of Manson, Knutsen and Holman as errors of judgment in implementing commissioners’ directive to, as Mielke put it, “think outside the box and be solution-minded.”

They saw Manson’s blunders as a couple of bad calls among thousands of decisions.

Although Wednesday’s action was unanimous, Mielke acknowledged in a telephone interview that Mager may be at odds with him and Richard on one or two issues.

With regard to discipline, Mielke said, “The challenge is to be very cautious about having a chilling effect on department heads.”

Richard said flatly that he won’t seek disciplinary action, and “I’m probably not going to support any drastic disciplinary measures.”

“I own some of the responsibility when Jim (Manson) made decisions that some might argue were too creative,” Richard said.

Before Mager joined the board in January, Richard said, commissioners told department heads that “we want you to be creative. We want you to be problem-solvers.”

Supervisors were told to stay within the law, but “do the best that you can to help people realize and achieve their goals as long as it doesn’t compromise public safety and welfare,” Richard said.

He said some of Hunt’s whistle-blower allegations spring from a “communications breakdown” rooted in “philosophical differences” between building inspectors and planners.

Knutsen and Holman should have gotten outside advice, starting with their assigned attorney and possibly from “a peer from another jurisdiction,” Richard said.

It was a mistake to have a building official pass judgment on the planning issues in Knutsen’s construction project, Mielke said.

He stopped short of saying it was a mistake when commissioners combined the previously separate building and planning departments in 1995, but said commissioners had been considering a reorganization of the combined department “long before the whistle-blower complaint came up.”

Speaking from his hotel room in Washington, D.C., Richard called Wednesday’s action “a pretty good resolution to this valid complaint,” although “nobody’s going to get everything they want.”

As for Hunt, Richard said, “We will stand behind and protect Bruce for having the courage to step forward and say what was on his heart.”