Spokane health board down two members, at least temporarily, after deadlock over state law

The Spokane County Board of Health is short two members following a week of deadlock over the appointment of its community stakeholder representative, which led to County Commissioner Chris Jordan being temporarily removed because of a quirk in state law.

Both positions on the board that oversees the Spokane Regional Health District will likely be filled , but the deadlock has highlighted frustrations with the peculiarities of state-level reforms and continued political divisions .

State regulations require health boards to be evenly divided between elected officials and unelected members of the public appointed by the rest of the body. Three non-elected positions were expiring last week when the Board of Health met to interview candidates and attempt to recommend one of them to the County Commission for approval.

In two cases, that decision was simple. Patricia Kienholz, representing “public health consumers,” and Dr. Monica Blykowski-May, representing “public health, health care facilities or providers,” were both reappointed to new two-year terms.

But for roughly an hour last week, health board members made zero progress deciding between three candidates for the last position representing “community stakeholders.” Charlie Duranona, whose term expired last week, did not seek reappointment.

Those seeking to replace here included Derek Baziotis, owner of Bene’s restaurant and local government affairs manager for the Washington Hospitality Association, whose industry is highly regulated by the health district; Sarah Spier, a behavioral health and addiction treatment consultant in her 16th year of recovery from an opioid addiction developed during her former career in Hollywood; and Stephaine Courtney, executive director of The Shades of Motherhood Network who focused on developing culturally competent relationships with Spokane’s Black and brown communities and improving maternal health outcomes.

County Commissioner Josh Kerns nominated Baziotis, arguing the health board would benefit from the perspective of someone in the food service industry. The health district issued more than 27,000 food-handler permits in 2025. Spokane City Councilman Michael Cathcart advocated for Spier, saying that addiction was the most pressing public health issue of the day and that Spier’s lived experience was compelling. Jordan pushed for Courtney, arguing the board needed a voice for the Black community and an advocate for maternal and child health.

One by one, the board considered recommending each of these three candidates, and each time the score was 4-4. Kienholz, Kerns, County Commissioner Mary (Kuney) Brooks and Cathcart supported Baziotis and Spier; Jordan, Tribal representatives Maureen Rosette and Liz Henry, and Commissioner Amber Waldref supported Courtney.

Attempts to advance multiple candidates to the commission, which state law doesn’t expressly forbid, as well as an attempt to restart the process and allow for new applications, were also met with deadlock.

On Tuesday, the County Commission voted to reappoint Blykowski-May and Kienholz. With one of its non-elected positions remaining unfilled, however, state law required one of the elected members of the health board to be removed. The commission majority supported removing Jordan, who is the least senior member of the board until the community stakeholder position could be filled.

In a brief interview Friday, Cathcart noted that the same had happened to him in 2025 during delayed approval of a non-elected member at the time, when he was kicked off the health board until that seat could be filled more than a month later.

Noting he would be “disappointed to be dis-appointed,” Jordan unsuccessfully asked for a volunteer to temporarily step down in his place.

The health board held another special meeting on Thursday, this time without Jordan, where the body once again debated how to proceed. During the preceding week, Spier withdrew her application, which Brooks said was due to “how the meeting went the other day.”

Rosette, who attempted to motion for Courtney’s reconsideration but was stymied by procedural barriers, expressed frustration that the candidate couldn’t receive majority support.

“I know that I’m not going to live as long as you guys just because I’m native, and Black communities (experience that) as well, and that’s a big public health issue,” she said.

In the end, the board again considered and approved sending both Baziotis and Courtney to the County Commission to decide.

Which candidate will ultimately advance may well be a foregone conclusion. All but one of the county commissioners also sits on the health board and has already weighed in on their preferred candidate. Only Commissioner Al French has yet to weigh in. He is notably a member of the commission’s conservative majority, along with Brooks and Kerns.

It also remains to be seen whether a similar situation will arise again. There was bipartisan dissatisfaction this week over the state laws reforming health board representation first implemented by then-Rep. Marcus Riccelli and reformed last year by Rep. Natasha Hill, two Spokane Democrats.

For Waldref, the frustration appeared to be focused on the state law’s lack of flexibility, requiring elected members to drop off and return at the drop of a hat if there were issues filling a non-elected position, particularly given the long application process for those non-elected members.

“It’s a bit frustrating that I think the RCW and the WAC were not written in a way that did not anticipate a variety of issues that may come up, like someone’s seat is vacant and then it may take a week or two or a month to fill that vacancy,” she said Tuesday.

Others like Kerns expressed deeper frustrations with having the health board’s makeup regulated by Olympia.

“We had a perfectly functional health board before they got involved… it worked,” Kerns said. “This is just proof that their concept, their vision for how a health board should look, was a bad idea.”

Jordan, along with Waldref, are the two commissioners whose districts overlap the most with the city of Spokane. For Mayor Lisa Brown, the deadlock and subsequent removal of Jordan, even temporarily, highlighted her own concerns with the city’s inability to appoint its own elected representatives. While Cathcart is a Spokane city councilman, he was appointed by the county to represent every town and city in the county, not Spokane specifically.

“You’ve got no ability for the legislative or the executive branch of the city to directly weigh in,” Brown said. “We’re at the whim of their decisions about whether a Spokane person gets appointed.”