West to appeal recall

Spokane Mayor Jim West, ignoring calls from the business community to allow an immediate recall election, said Monday he will challenge a judge’s ruling that there is sufficient evidence for a vote.

West’s decision to file an appeal puts the question of a recall election before the Washington state Supreme Court. The state’s highest court is scheduled to take its summer recess beginning this weekend and not return to hear cases until Sept. 13.

Backers of a West recall effort said Monday they intend to ask the Supreme Court for an emergency hearing this summer, a fairly rare event that last occurred during December’s recess when two general election challenges were heard.

West refused to take questions about his appeal but issued a lengthy statement Monday.

“The citizens of Spokane deserve to know why I have decided to appeal,” West said in a prepared statement.

“Simply put, it is because the charges are false and the ballot statement they would vote on was improperly prepared and is prejudicial.”

Rita Amunrud, of Citizens for Integrity in Government, questioned the reasoning behind the mayor’s decision on Monday.

“This is an obvious attempt by West to bilk the taxpayers out of more money by remaining in office by delaying what I believe will be an eventual vote on his recall,” Amunrud said.

Shannon Sullivan, the unemployed Spokane woman who started the recall fight and won round one in Superior Court, said the appeal didn’t come as a surprise.

“We’re ready,” said Sullivan.

Two hours after West announced his decision, City Council members got involved in a heated exchange over a proposed resolution asking the mayor to abandon his recall appeal.

In a related development, former City Councilman Steve Eugster filed suit Monday challenging the legality of a citizens panel appointed to determine if West violated city policies, ethics or laws by using his city e-mail to offer an internship to a teenager he met in a gay chat room. The panel also will investigate West’s appointment of another young man he met online to the city’s Human Rights Commission.

West is appealing a June 13 ruling by visiting Superior Court Judge Craig Matheson, who said there was sufficient information presented by Sullivan to allow her and a citizens group to begin collecting the 12,600 signatures needed to force a recall election.

Sullivan, acting as her own attorney, argued to the court that West used his public office to improperly “solicit internships for young men for his own personal uses.”

“That is an improper use of the (mayor’s) office,” said Matheson, who dismissed two other allegations – that West misused his city computer to interact with young men on a gay Web site and that his actions were “hurting the reputation of the city” – as not sufficiently detailed.

Sullivan based her arguments on a series of stories published in The Spokesman-Review beginning May 5.

West’s statement Monday also was sharply critical of the newspaper’s coverage, characterizing news stories as an invasion of his private life.

Although the statement makes several references to “poor judgment” in his personal life, the newspaper’s coverage has been focused on his conduct in public life over the span of a quarter-century – as a sheriff’s deputy, Boy Scout leader, city councilman, state legislator and mayor since January 2004. A special panel has been appointed to investigate West’s City Hall-related activities, and the FBI is in the initial phases of a public corruption investigation.

“People have a hard time remembering this simple fact,” West said in his statement. “In our system a person is innocent until proven guilty.”

West has not been charged with a crime, which the newspaper’s coverage has made clear. West has been accused of sexually abusing two boys when he was a Spokane County Sheriff’s deputy – allegations he denied again on Monday – but the statute of limitations has expired, preventing any criminal charges.

At issue – according to critics, the Spokane business community, the Republican party and numerous writers of letters to the editor – is West’s judgment.

Last fall, a 19-year-old gay man told the newspaper that he went on a date and had consensual sex with West after meeting him in an online chat room.

In order to verify the man’s claim that West was using the screen aliases “Cobra82nd” and “RightBi-Guy” on Gay.com, the newspaper hired a forensic computer expert.

In West’s statement, he said the newspaper “hired the imposter with the explicit purpose of trying to lure me into committing an illegal act.”

Transcripts from those online chats show, however, that West was the first to bring up sex with the fictional 18-year-old high school student. West also suggested that he and “Moto-Brock” switch their conversations from Gay.com to America Online instant messaging, which is transitory in nature and disappears quickly unless recorded. Over a period of several months, West offered Moto-Brock autographed sports memorabilia, tickets to sporting events, help getting into college and an internship in the mayor’s office.

In an interview with the newspaper on May 4, West admitted his online relationships with both the 19 year-old and Moto-Brock.

In Monday’s statement, he said: “Yes I exercised poor judgment and made mistakes in my personal life, but nothing illegal and nothing unethical. Chatting online about sex with a person I believed to be 18 years old was wrong.

“As I said, I’m embarrassed and ashamed, but my personal mistake need not be a public crusade to drive me from office and stop the good work being done at City Hall,” West said.

In his far-ranging statement, West made a vague reference to Robert Galliher, one of two men who’ve accused West of child molestation. Galliher told the newspaper that West paid him a late-night visit at Geiger Corrections Center in 2003 to warn him not to talk about the past. West has denied visiting Geiger in previous interviews. What is not in dispute is that both Galliher’s counselor at Geiger and the facility’s former director said they were told to send Galliher a message to leave West alone.

In Monday’s statement, West also continued to claim that the log books from Morning Star Boy’s Ranch prove that he could not have checked out boys from the facility in the 1970s.

But in Sunday’s Spokesman-Review, assistant Morning Star director Dan Kuhlmann said West and fellow deputy David Hahn could have taken boys from the facility without registering their names in the log books. In an interview last week, Kuhlmann acknowledged that visitors were not required to sign the spiral log books.

West’s harshest critics at City Hall weren’t surprised by his decision to appeal the recall.

“I knew he would appeal it,” said City Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers.

“I thought he’d wait to the very last minute” to increase the chances that the Supreme Court will go into summer recess and won’t be able to hear the appeal until September, she said.

“I think it’s really a sham,” Rodgers said. “It doesn’t allow the public to have a say whether he should stay in office.” She pointed out that the mayor, in a televised news conference in early June, said he would leave office if the public voted him out.

Councilman Bob Apple said he hopes the Supreme Court hears the appeal on an emergency basis in the next 30 days.

“I would prefer him to resign,” Apple said.

At Monday afternoon’s briefing session before the regular council meeting, Councilwoman Mary Verner sought quick approval of a resolution calling on the mayor to abandon his appeal of the recall.

Verner’s proposal ran into criticism from Councilman Brad Stark, who labeled the resolution as “scandal-mongering.”

Stark pointed out that the council’s previous vote on a resolution calling for the mayor to resign had no effect on West. “We cannot compel the mayor to do anything,” Stark said, characterizing Verner’s resolution as “toothless.”

At one point, Council President Dennis Hession cautioned an excited Stark to calm down.

After the meeting, Hession said he believes the mayor should do what’s in the city’s best interests by letting the issue go to a recall vote.

The council on a 4-3 vote failed to suspend its rules to consider the resolution on Monday, but instead will consider it during its regular meeting next Tuesday. It takes five votes to suspend the rules to dispense with the council’s usual waiting period of at least one week.

“I just want everyone to know that we are not going to back down, we are not going to give up and he is going to be accountable,” Amunrud said during the public forum session of the meeting.

The spokeswoman for the Citizens for Integrity in Government said later in an interview that West has publicly promised to “abide by the people’s decision.”

“Obviously, he doesn’t want the people to decide or he would let the recall election to go forward now,” Amunrud said.

“He wants to drag it out as long as he possibly can and, once again, he’s walking over the tops of his constituents to serve himself,” she said.

Amunrud said the recall group, using the Web site www.westmustgo.com, fields calls daily from citizens who want to know when and where they can sign recall petitions.

“There is a real eagerness in the community,” she said.

On May 23, the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Spokane Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau formally urged West to resign. Leaders of those business organizations said chief executives of private companies would have been fired for the conduct West admitted.

The following week, on May 31, the City Council voted unanimously, calling on West to resign. On June 2, his own Republican Party said he should step down because citizens can no longer trust him.