LANGLEY — Island County Commissioner Mike Shelton said Friday he doesn’t believe county commissioners should exercise more control over the fair association or board.

“We exercised the amount of oversight that we should. And I don’t know what we should do to increase oversight,” he said.

Shelton’s view on the commissioners’ oversight role comes after weeks of requests from Langley residents for county commissioners to take a bigger role in resolving ongoing disputes involving county fair officials.

Shelton also has no quibbles over a controversial land sale last year involving land donated to the county fair.

In a statement released Friday and posted in an online forum for the Langley community, Shelton said the land given by Margaret Waterman to the Island County Fair in 1988 was not a donation to the county.

As such, Shelton said the money from the sale did not need to be deposited in the county’s account for the fair.

It’s not clear on what his assumption is based.

The county prosecutor never reviewed the initial donation of the property or the subsequent sale, said Island County prosecutor Greg Banks. If either had gone through the county, Banks said his office would have reviewed it.

Earlier, Island County Treasurer Linda Riffe said additional research done by her staff confirmed news reports previously published by The Record that the land was originally donated to the Island County Fair, and not the Island County Fair Association.

As such, Riffe said it appeared the land became the property of Island County. It was ruled as exempt from all taxes except the state’s property tax levy for forest firefighting protection.

Shelton’s statement also stands in stark contrast to public records obtained earlier by The Record.

In property records filed with the county at the time of the donation, obtained earlier this month from Island County’s archives, documents show the property was donated to the Island County Fair. The records do not specifically mention the Island County Fair Association as the intended recipient, and both the Real Estate Excise Tax form and the quit claim deed filed in May 1988 list the donation being made to the Island County Fair.

More recent documents obtained by The Record shows that taxpayers have paid property taxes on the donated land in 2003 and 2005.

Shelton did not address the payment of taxes on the property in his statement Friday.

Commissioner John Dean said earlier on Friday that he had not heard about taxes being paid through the county on the property.

He seemed surprised and said this issue had not been discussed among the commissioners, but added that he had limited knowledge about fair business because he just recently took office.

“It’s something we need to look at,” Dean said.

Shelton’s statement also brushed aside requirements in the Island County Code that dictate that “all fair receipts and donations shall be deposited” in the Island County Fair Fund as stated by the county code.

The county fair fund is overseen and controlled by the county’s General Services Administration. Members of the Island County Fair Association, however, placed the $120,000 the association received from the land sale into two private bank accounts outside the county’s control.

In his statement, Shelton indicated that only donations that are made toward the running of the fair are put into the County Fair Fund.

“The money from the sale of the Waterman property did not come from the production of the fair and is not required to be deposited in the county’s account,” Shelton said in his statement.

The land sale has been at the center of a storm of controversy since news of the sale came to light last month.

Fair officials have repeatedly refused to release records on the sale and other donations made to the fair, and the state Auditor’s Office has vowed to examine the land sale and the fair association’s refusal to release public records.

Shelton said Friday the county will ask the fair association and board to turn over all records that are related to fair operations and they will then be available to the public.

The Island County Fair Association was given agency status by county commissioners in 1962, and county commissioners made the fair an official function of Island County at the time. Records show that commissioners granted the fair association its status as a county agency to bring it into compliance with state laws for receiving taxpayer funds.

Records also show that the county took control of the assets of the fair association in 1962, and ordered that all future donations and receipts be placed in the County Fair Fund. The resolution that set such strict requirements on fair donations and money was still in effect at the time the Waterman property was donated to the county fair in 1988.

In his statement, Shelton said the fair association was not a public agency.

That view runs counter to the opinion of the state Auditor’s Office, however.

State audit records on Island County show the state has long considered the fair association as a public agency, based on an opinion made by the state Attorney General’s Office.