Spokane Valley mayor: Public meetings law wasn’t broken in city manager’s firing

Spokane Valley Mayor Rod Higgins on Wednesday defended the way City Manager Mike Jackson was fired the previous night, saying the state’s open-meetings law wasn’t broken.

Members of the Spokane Valley City Council met in executive session at 5 p.m. Tuesday, then reconvened to take a public vote on whether to fire Jackson. It passed, 4-3.

But Jackson said he was told by Higgins and Deputy Mayor Arne Woodard on Friday afternoon that he was going to be fired, indicating that agreement had been reached by the council majority without a public vote.

“We asked Jackson for his resignation,” Higgins said Wednesday. “We simply told him what we expected would come up on Tuesday.”

Minority City Council members Dean Grafos, Chuck Hafner and Bill Gothmann all said Tuesday that they were not aware Jackson was going to be fired.

Current and past Spokane Valley City Council members have a history of violating the Open Public Meetings Act, and Higgins has often stated he’s opposed to open meeting rules because he believes they hinder frank discussion among council members.

Also Wednesday, Higgins met with Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich to discuss the future of his agency providing police services to Spokane Valley under contract. That arrangement has been in place since Spokane Valley was incorporated in 2003.

At the council meeting Tuesday, Councilman Grafos said he believed Jackson was fired because the city manager opposed the idea of Spokane Valley starting its own police department.

Higgins, however, said he told Knezovich there are no plans to replace the contract Spokane Valley has with the Sheriff’s Office.

“We will review the contract and we may try to revise parts of it when it’s up this summer,” Higgins said, “but there is no movement afoot to replace it.”

Higgins said the desire to replace the sheriff’s contract is a rumor that was started by Grafos and Hafner during the November election.

“They accused Sam Wood and Arne Woodard of trying to get rid of the sheriff; we simply aren’t going to do that,” Higgins said.

Deputy City Manager Mark Calhoun will temporarily fill in for Jackson, who had worked for the city since incorporation, originally as its parks director. Calhoun may be appointed acting city manager, Higgins said.

The City Council has not decided how it will search for Jackson’s replacement. Higgins said it’s possible the city will use a private recruiter.

“The job will be posted as soon as we have decided which process we will use,” Higgins said.

Spokane Valley spokeswoman Carolbelle Branch said she is not sure how much of the hiring discussion will take place in open meetings.

“We are figuring that out right now,” Branch said.

Many in the audience Tuesday evening questioned if the city had given adequate notice of the special meeting where Jackson’s firing was discussed.

A notice about the executive session went out via the city’s email list Monday morning, and the same notice was posted on the front door of City Hall on Tuesday evening. The notice wasn’t added to the City Council agenda posted online, but was posted elsewhere on the website.

Higgins called the complaints about lack of notice “baloney.”

“If the public notice didn’t work, then why were there so many people there?” he asked. “We used the method we always used. We did the best we could.”