EDITORIAL | Whidbey’s commissioners were wrong to challenge the high court

Published 6:00 am Wednesday, January 11, 2017

There’s an old proverb out there that says, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Apparently, the Island County commissioners aren’t aware of this ancient adage. The board decided this week to break the very law that Washington’s highest court just said it violated when the commissioners hired an outside attorney last year without the permission of the county prosecutor. Adding to the irony, the board did so by hiring the very same lawyer to provide legal advice on how to contest the very same court decision.

Yup, our heads are spinning too.

While the commissioners’s decision isn’t technically “illegal” because the court’s official mandate hasn’t been recorded — essentially an administrative task — the ruling was clear. The board was wrong. It needed the prosecutor’s consent to hire outside counsel. The commissioners’ decision to so blatantly ignore the unanimous 9-0 decision, using a bureaucratic process as a shield, is as disturbing as is their dogmatic refusal to let this issue go. This is not about justice and it certainly isn’t about protecting the public’s best interest. It’s about pride and the commissioners’ ongoing feud with Island County Prosecutor Greg Banks.

Island County Commissioner Jill Johnson says the decision subverts the authority of the board, that it “creates an unnecessary, artificial obstacle” to its power as a policy maker.

Rubbish.

All it does it subvert the authority of the commissioners, which is incidentally the same argument Banks, also an autonomous elected official, has made from day one. The commissioners do decide policy. And they decide the budget. But they don’t get to decide who their attorney is, who their treasurer is, who their coroner is, who their sheriff is or who their prosecutor is. That’s the voters’ job. The law says so. And now the high court said so.

Incidentally, The Record said the same thing in an editorial last year. But perhaps there’s another way to make this point, one that will resonate with the commissioners. If the board continues to waste time and resources pursuing this course, one that has so far cost nearly $450,000, we suggest that Banks pick up the slack by hiring his own “outside” board of commissioners to make policy decisions while our regularly and publicly elected commissioners are otherwise engaged.

No? Of course not. The suggestion is simply ridiculous, and we don’t need a high court to tell us so.