Spokane Valley incurred nearly $150,000 in expenses this year over Councilman Al Merkel

Al Merkel’s first year on the Spokane Valley City Council has been expensive.

He’s cost the city around $143,000, according to a new report regarding an ethics investigation into his behavior released by City Manager John Hohman.

As Americans watched presidential election results roll in Tuesday night, the council got underway with its regular weekly meeting. While the business conducted during the meeting was relatively mundane, included in the meeting’s agenda was an “Information Only” spreadsheet detailing in dollars and cents what the city’s response to Merkel’s behavior has cost the city.

Such items are included to provide information to the board and general public, but are not necessarily discussed during a meeting. Other information items that have appeared on Spokane Valley agendas include monthly reports from area fire districts, the Spokane Valley Police Department or different city departments.

The report on expenditures related to Merkel appears to pre-empt an eventual 2024 budget amendment needed to cover the total costs.

“Funds spent to protect the City and staff from CM Merkel’s risk-inducing behavior are no longer available to support Council priorities, such as public safety,” the report reads. “Moreover, this report does not quantify the impact on city services of having to re-direct the city’s limited staff resources to address the complaints against CM Merkel and the risks to which his actions expose the City.”

Jill Smith, spokeswoman for the city of Spokane Valley, said the report was compiled at the request of the City Council and the many members of the public who have inquired about the cost of the ethics investigations into Merkel’s behavior conducted this year.

The report differentiates the expenses into four categories, with the largest proportion of the spending, $96,391 in total, going toward “actions taken to protect city employees.” The most noteworthy line item in the category is the cost of the investigation that found Merkel engaged in a pattern of disrespectful behavior toward city staff, often belittling and berating them, as they told the investigator.

Included in the total cost are additional legal fees after the investigation was completed to prevent discrimination and retaliation against anyone who may have complained or participated in the investigation, according to the report.

Another line item in the most expensive category was “costs to implement methods to minimize disruptions to city operations and limit his interactions with staff,” the report reads. Earlier this year, the city paid Garco Construction more than $40,000 to renovate the third floor of City Hall to further separate Merkel from city staffers.

Deputy Mayor Tim Hattenburg told The Spokesman-Review earlier this year that the renovations to the open floor layout had been considered for years, but were greatly expedited over Merkel’s aggressive and imposing behavior.

In addition to being a more productive work environment, the renovated space also has more safety measures to prevent anyone from coming in and harming City Hall employees. One of the impetuses for the hostile work investigation into Merkel was a request from an outside safety consultant to look into the councilman after more than a dozen employees identified fear of him and his supporters as one of their top safety concerns, as previously reported by The Spokesman-Review.

The most recent independent investigation into Merkel found he’s likely violating city policies and state public records law related to his use of the social media platform Nextdoor, and the efforts to protect the city from the legal ramifications of his actions, is the second-most expensive category. The report estimates the total cost to be around $30,548.50 thus far, which does not include the cost of the appeal Merkel requested. The private investigator defending her work and the contracted hearing examiner hearing the appeal will need to be compensated by the city.

Merkel is not just the subject of ethical complaints in the city; he’s also been on the filing end of a complaint against fellow councilmembers Rod Higgins and Mayor Pam Haley, alleging they violated the council’s code of conduct. The investigation into that “unfounded complaint,” as the report puts it, cost $4,138.05.

Rounding out the detailed spreadsheet is the estimated $12,089.38 spent to compensate city employees for dealing with 54 public records requests related to Merkel’s behavior, according to the report. The category is identified as “nonproductive uses of staff time.”

“Year-to-date, these requests are 14% of all public record requests received by the City,” the report states.

The Spokesman-Review has filed five of those requests since February.

In his council comments, a period at the end of every meeting in which board members can speak about whatever they’d like, Merkel discredited the report as a waste of Spokane Valley taxpayer’s money and called on those taxpayers to tell the city and his fellow councilmembers “to stop wasting their money on trying to politically attack me.”

“This report is nothing less than a taxpayer-produced hit job on me that provides absolutely nothing other than a list of how much money was spent trying to besmirch my character and trying to attack me,” Merkel said. “A lot of fancy words like ‘risk’ are used and ‘potential’ and things of that nature.”

Councilwoman Laura Padden was the first to respond, launching into prepared remarks critical of Merkel’s tendency to paint himself as a victim.

“Where he is today is the direct result of his behavior, his actions and his decisions,” Padden said. “The victim is not the council member.”

Padden went on to identify the “real victims” as the city employees he’s intimidated and disrespected, the “people he has belittled and driven off Nextdoor with his nastiness,” those who have asked for transparency through public record requests Merkel does not comply with and his neighbors, who have filed more than 10 nuisance complaints against Merkel in the past three years over cars and other items on his property.

“The real victims are Valley taxpayers who see their tax money spent trying to hold the council member accountable for his behavior, one who has sworn to uphold the law and yet constantly is violating it, and instead of that money going for public safety, road improvements, parks, economic development, all the other things that the city needs to spend money on,” Padden said.

Councilwoman Jessica Yaeger echoed Padden, calling the expenses a waste that could have been directed to city efforts that need funding, like the ongoing effort to bolster the Spokane Valley Police Department.

“Even more troubling is that his actions appear driven by self-interest rather than a commitment to the community,” Yaeger said. “His behavior, manipulating the truth, which you just saw again, disregarding established rules and prioritizing personal gain over public interest, undermines the ethical and judiciary responsibilities that this council is sworn to uphold.”

She went on to call on the councilman to step down “if he cannot fulfill his obligations to this community in a responsible and ethical manner,” and encouraged the community to consider launching a recall effort against Merkel.

Hattenburg chimed in to endorse the councilwomen’s comments, and say all of the spending could have been avoided if Merkel treated staff appropriately, followed the training he was provided and complied with state law and City Council standards.

Haley concluded by rebuking Merkel’s repeated insinuation that his troubles with the board and larger city government are politically motivated.

“I hope the public understands that it’s nothing personal, it’s not political,” Haley said. “It has nothing to do with that.”

She said risk isn’t a “fancy” word, it’s the word used to describe how Merkel’s actions could impact the city and its taxpayers. His refusal to connect his Nextdoor account to the record-keeping system the city uses places the city at great legal risk by not complying with the Public Records Act, Haley said.

“All Councilmember Merkel has to do to stop the bleeding of the taxpayers money that’s occurring right now is to keep track of what he writes,” Haley said. “That’s it. He’s been told that time after time after time, and for some reason, refuses to comply with that.”