Group opposed to Richland school recall goes after petition leader’s business
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Richland School Board Recall Effort
A high-profile group of voters filed to recall board members Semi Bird, Audra Byrd and Kari Williams after their controversial vote to make face masks optional.
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The fight over whether three Richland School Board members should be removed from office has gotten more personal.
Resist the Recall, a group supporting the embattled board members, is calling for the public to boycott the business of one of the men behind the recall effort.
“Please consider a different venue!” read a June 4 post on the group’s Facebook page.
“Rewster’s Craft Bar and Grill and Horn Rapids Golf Course are owned by Brad Rew, one of the petitioners for the recall ... because they fought to get masks off Richland school children.”
The Facebook page was created to rally support the three board members — Semi Bird, Audra Byrd and Kari Williams.
They voted in February to make COVID masks optional, a controversial move that caught many community members off guard.
The board ultimately paid out $5,000 last month to settle an Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA) lawsuit.
They were accused of violating the law by not providing specifics on what the meeting would focus on. They dispute that claim but settled to end the litigation.
And in April, a group of four Richland voters submitted petitions to recall the three board members over alleged violations of open meetings laws, district policies and ethics, and Washington state’s indoor mask mandate.
Last month, the allegations were found to have met the state’s standards for a recall vote, but the issue currently is being appealed to the state Supreme Court.
A decision is expected in the next few weeks.
If upheld, leaders of the recall can start collecting signatures to get the question on the ballot.
Mike Lawrence, another leader of the recall, was among about 130 online commenters who chimed in on the Facebook post about boycotting Rew’s businesses.
“The recall is not about mask(s), it is about following the laws and rules about public meetings by elected officials,” the former manager of the Hanford nuclear reservation wrote.
Board member Semi Bird told the Tri-City Herald that while he “appreciates” many of the things Resist the Recall posts, he did not call for the boycott and is not involved in managing that group’s social media posts.
“I don’t like cancel culture. I don’t like meanness — I don’t like that,” he said.
Bird emphasized that he’s been calling for “kindness and grace” and for the community to come together, despite tensions at school board meetings only flaring more in the months since the February vote.
Audra Byrd appears to be the only member named in the recall who is promoting the boycott effort through her own public Facebook page.
Resist the Recall organizers have alleged bias by Benton Franklin Superior Court Judge Norma Rodriguez, who was appointed by Gov. Jay Inslee to the seat earlier this year and approved the petitions; have criticized three of the four petitioners for not personally appearing at court hearings; and have spread misinformation that masks don’t prevent COVID.
The We Want Accountability PAC is currently crowd sourcing donations to help cover the legal fees for the three school board members.
The conservative Kennewick-based political action committee has raised about $1,500.
‘It’s just not OK’
Brad Rew in a phone interview with the Herald said he was more concerned with the operation of the school district than with any financial repercussion that may come with a boycott levied against his businesses.
“I’m not bothered by it,” he said, adding later: “It’s not affecting me either way, but at the same time I don’t like people saying negative things about me, especially things that aren’t true.”
Rew, a lifelong Richland resident and conservative, is the owner of Gale Rew Construction and has investments throughout the Tri-Cities. He’s also a longtime coach and previously was involved with the YMCA of the Greater Tri-Cities.
His decision to join the recall effort was not about masks.
“If it was up to me, we would have removed masks several months prior to when Inslee removed masks,” he said. Instead, he felt the board members were not following laws and ensuring service to Richland children goes uninterrupted.
“We can’t be hypocrites like this. We’re not serving our kids. We’re not looking out for our kids by doing that type of things, and we’re not serving a good example,” he said.
If it moves past the signature gathering stage, a recall election against the three school board members could end up costing the district $150,000 to $250,000, though estimates from the Benton County Elections Department are not specific.
Rew said allowing the district to break the state’s mask mandate could have cost them far more.
“The liabilities, the risks and the losses that could have come out of that could have been in the tens of millions of dollars,” he said.
And he’s concerned the three board members will continue to be a financial liability in the future and their actions are already costing the district in legal fees.
In the first four months of the year, the school district has spent about $72,000 on legal expenses.
In previous years, the district spends $80,000 to $90,000 for legal fees during a full year.
It wasn’t immediately clear, though, what cases the $72,000 has been spent on.
This story was originally published June 10, 2022 at 12:09 PM.
