PORT ANGELES — Selinda Barkhuis is backing off on her threat to challenge the Clallam County commissioners’ disbursement of Opportunity Fund proceeds in Superior Court.
For now.
“I don’t know if it’s necessary to go to Superior Court,” the county treasurer said Thursday in an interview.
“The commissioners are in the driver’s seat.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Barkhuis said she is interested in seeing what comes of the commissioners’ Aug. 4 public hearings on the two county Opportunity Fund grants, made up of sales tax proceeds returned to the county.
“My duty, as county treasurer, is to safekeep the taxpayers funds ‘until disbursed according to law,’” she said in a subsequent email Friday when asked if she would also withhold the warrants for the grants.
“From my perspective, the question of whether funds are indeed being ‘disbursed according to law’ does not arise again until the city or port present me with any new warrants for these grants.”
A licensed attorney, Barkhuis has disputed the commissioners’ award of $1.3 million in infrastructure grants to the city and Port of Port Angeles.
She has insisted that not using the money for its intended purpose, the Carlsborg sewer project, requires public hearings as a “debatable budget emergency” and requires contracts between the county and grant recipients that must be approved by county Prosecuting Attorney Mark Nichols.
She has previously said she will reject the warrants without an order from Superior Court despite Nichols and the state Auditor’s Office saying the commissioners followed the correct process.
Following Barkhuis’ objections, commissioners sent the applications back to the Opportunity Fund board, which had already recommended approval, for second hearings.
Opportunity Fund board members re-recommended approval of the city grant of $285,952 for a waterfront improvement project July 16.
On Thursday, they re-recommended approval of the port’s grant of $1 million to complete construction of a building that is expected to house a composites recycling center.
In an email Monday to port officials, city and county officials, and the Peninsula Daily News, Barkhuis seemed to strike a harder line than later in the week.
She urged the recipients to encourage the commissioners to follow state law requirements for public hearings and county contracting requirements.
“To the extent that the county commissioners and the county prosecutor continue to challenge the need for the commissioners to comply with these provisions, which are obviously meant to ensure that public funds are being ‘disbursed according to law,’ I have no choice but to reject any resulting warrants, and to defer to the court the question as to whether these funds are indeed being ‘disbursed according to law,’” she said.
Barkhuis discussed the email in an interview Thursday.
Asked what she meant by “defer,” she said she did not know.
“I don’t know what it means, I don’t know what I’m going to do, I don’t know what [commissioners] are going to do, I don’t know what the public hearing is like. I can’t predict the future,” Barkhuis said.
“There are lots of ways to get to Superior Court.
“There are all sorts of causes of action.”
She noted the hearing is in about three weeks.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said.
“I’m not going to be commenting on it along the way and sending more emails.
“They made the decision to move forward, and there they are.
“I need to get back to working on some very important things at the office, and they are doing their important work, and we’ll go from there.”
Jim McEntire, the commissioners’ board chairman, said the commissioners will hold the Aug. 4 hearing even though it’s not required as part of considering a resolution to award the grants.
He said the process did not constitute the debatable budget emergency that Barkhuis insists it is.
McEntire said that instead, he favored signing something akin to a memo of agreement for each grant that “memorializes” the awards.
Signing contracts “would be pretty much inconsistent with the prosecuting attorney’s advice to us,” he said.
“I have an obligation to follow the prosecuting attorney’s advice whenever he gives it to us.
“To do otherwise, I don’t quite honestly know if that’s illegal, but it is certainly unwise in the extreme.”
According to state law, Nichols is the commissioners’ — and Barkhuis’ — legal adviser.
But neither the board nor Barkhuis is required to follow Nichols’ advice, he said Friday.
“In taking the action [the commissioners] have recently taken in the calling of two public hearings, they are doing something contrary to what the law requires by going above and beyond the legal requirements,” Nichols said.
“I don’t see any significant downside to that course of action.
“It’s meant to cure a transparency concern that’s been expressed.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.