Tom Thiersch has filed a lawsuit against the Jefferson County Public Utility District, alleging that commissioners and specifically Commissioner Wayne King violated the state Open Public Meetings Act more than 30 times in 2015.

The 23-page suit was filed Nov. 15 in Jefferson County Superior Court by Allied Law Group attorney Michele Earl-Hubbard on behalf of Thiersch.

The suit specifies meetings in 2015 in which, Thiersch argues, from which the public was excluded and that the board did not legally announce reasons for going into a closed executive session.

King, who is being sued individually, did not return the Leader’s call for comment and did not respond to an email inquiry.

“King should have known better since he’s a self-proclaimed advocate for open government,” Thiersch said Nov. 18 of his lawsuit. “He was choosing which parts of the law he wanted to follow.

“The one [executive session] that nailed it for me was when they went into an executive session to interview attorneys who were being hired as a contractor. You can’t do interviews like that,” said Thiersch, who is a member of the Washington Coalition for Open Government.

PUD manager Jim Parker said he referred the suit to the Public Utility Risk Management Services Joint Self-Insurance Fund, which covers the PUD. That risk pool has 20 days from Nov. 15 to respond.

“We feel like we’re trying to comply with all the facets of the law. We record our meetings and announce when we go into executive session,” Parker said. “We try to have the president doing it. He [Thiersch] is pretty good about tracking the fine points of it. So I was a little surprised.”

The suit contends that King, then president of the three-member elected board, allowed Parker or PUD contract attorney Malcolm Harris to announce that the board would be going into executive session to talk about “personnel issues” without being specific. The job belongs to the chair of the board, not manager or attorney, the suit contends.

Thiersch said that other governments in Jefferson County, including the Port Townsend School District and Jefferson Healthcare board of commissioners, have all appreciated it when he’s brought up open public meeting issues.

“They [school and hospital boards] thanked me and they changed their ways. They’re doing things correctly. The PUD, they apparently couldn’t care less,” Thiersch said.

Thiersch said he saw attorney Earl-Hubbard earlier this year when she was arguing an open records case brought against Jefferson County by Mike Belenski. The case wound up in the state Supreme Court. Belenski lost that case.

Thiersch said it took time to get the suit together, and he decided against filing it before the Nov. 8 general election because he did not want to influence the election regarding PUD incumbent Barney Burke and challenger Jeff Randall, which Randall won.

Burke is not named in the suit, nor is Commissioner Ken Collins.

“The complaint takes issue with a specific time period, and the person in charge was Mr. King and the person who didn’t change the practice was Mr. King,” said Earl-Hubbard of why the other two commissioners were not named. “The one who was most culpable was Mr. King.”

The suit asks that King be required to pay a penalty of $500 for each of 37 times the law was violated and that the penalties be paid to Thiersch. Thiersch also is asking for attorney fees, and he is asking that a judge order the PUD to conduct all of its future meetings in full compliance with the law.

Earl-Hubbard also said that any violations of the Open Public Meetings Act occurring after the time period specified in the suit could still be part of another suit.

She said Thiersch waited a long time and gave the PUD an opportunity to change its ways, and when it did not, “he thought it was important to the community to have a judge say it,” she said of asking a court to tell the PUD to follow the law.

LAWSUIT DETAILS

Although the suit focuses on meetings in 2015, the suit references email correspondence between King and Thiersch in 2014 that suggests King acknowledges he had had training on the state law.

“I do like the fact that ALL electeds have to get the training. Not just PUD commissioners. So many elected (sic) think they know all the rules. NOT,” King wrote, according to emails contained within the lawsuit.

Later, in March 2015, Thiersch wrote an email to all commissioners and Parker stating that he was providing information about the law, RCW 42.30, and specifically noted how the board needed to announce how to move into executive session.

Thiersch told them that year that his reading of the law, based on his research with the Municipal Research and Services Center (MRSC), was that it is not sufficient to announce the purpose of a closed executive session as being to discuss “personnel matters.”

“I’ve noticed that the Jefferson PUD BOC has not been following the requirement to announce, with specificity, its purpose(s) for going into Executive Session. I urge that you do so for all future meetings,” Thiersch wrote on March 3, 2015.

That MRSC document, titled “We’re going into executive session to discuss personnel. Is that OK?” from July 2012 states, “Thus, while it is possible to meet in an executive session to review or discuss some personnel matters, the mere fact that personnel is somehow connected with the topic does not in itself allow the meeting to be closed.”

And that same document, according to the suit, says, “Meeting in executive session to ‘discuss personnel’ is simply not sufficient.”

The suit indicates that King’s response to Thiersch’s email was “Thanks for your opinion.”

The suit alleges that the PUD violated the state law on 11 dates because the purpose for convening the executive session was “not a purpose permitted by the OPMA” or that it “was not stated with sufficient detail to allow the public to determine the purpose for excluding the public from the meeting.”

On 13 other occasions, the suit contends, the PUD violated the law because the presiding officer did not announce the purpose for excluding the public. In those cases, it was Parker or Harris who made the announcements, not King, the president of the board at the time.

Thiersch’s suit also alleges that on Jan. 13, 2015 the PUD commissioners violated the law by conducting a meeting by email.