Vote on county seat likely after ruling on signatures

PROSSER, Wash. – A ruling has been made that puts Benton County voters closer to deciding whether to move the county seat.

On Friday, Superior Court Judge John Lohrmann ruled in favor of a petition from former Superior Court judge Fred Staples. Staples has been working for years to move the county seat to Kennewick from Prosser.

The ruling means Staples won’t have to collect as many signatures from valid registered voters as he would have under a previous interpretation of the law from the state attorney general’s office.

Staples challenged the attorney general’s opinion in a lawsuit.

Friday’s hearing was held in Benton County Superior Court in Prosser, where Staples was a judge for decades.

The attorney general’s opinion said Staples would have to use the number of voters who turned out during last year’s high-turnout general election to determine how many signatures he needed.

But Staples said he should be able to use the turnout of this year’s general election instead. The off-year election is expected to have a much smaller turnout than the 2008 presidential election.

Staples told the Tri-City Herald he now has about 15,500 legitimate signatures. Although he believes those should be sufficient, he said he plans to continue gathering signatures as he seeks to put the issue before voters in 2010.

Staples said he plans to present his petitions to Benton County commissioners next year to get the county seat change referendum on the 2010 general election ballot.

The last time the issue was voted on, in 1984, it was defeated after failing to reach 60 percent approval.

Staples called Lohrmann’s ruling a “blessing.” Deputy Prosecutor Ryan Brown said he wasn’t sure if the county would appeal the ruling. Lohrmann is a judge in Walla Walla County.

The argument revolved around an 1890 statute that said petitions to put a measure on a ballot must contain signatures equivalent to at least a third of the number of voters who participated in the last general election. In 1890, general elections were held every two years. Now they’re held every year.