Update: Ethics policy decision will show if Kennewick Council members value transparency

Regardless of the Kennewick City Council’s ethics policy, alleged violations of Washington state open meeting and open records laws should be taken seriously no matter how long ago the offenses occurred.

Formal complaints against Kennewick City Council members Bill McKay, John Trumbo and Bill Beauchamp were filed in December by outgoing Kennewick Mayor Don Britain and outgoing council member Steve Lee.

Beauchamp likened the move to a parting grenade toss as Britain and Lee leave office, noting they waited two years to formally file their complaints.

But Lee told the Tri-City Herald that it’s more like a “Hail Mary pass to the community” so citizens know they have to pay close attention to the council’s new dynamic.

Britain and Lee were voted out in the November election, with business owner Gretl Crawford unseating Britain and dentist Loren Anderson unseating Lee.

Crawford and Anderson ran for office as part of the “dream team” with McKay and Trumbo, while Beauchamp was not up for election this year.

And Tuesday night, the city’s ethics policy was up for discussion. The council decided to push a formal decision on the issue to its Jan. 18th meeting.

It’s possible that with the council’s new makeup, the ethics policy will be modified or tossed out completely.

It could even be repealed retroactively, effectively eliminating the formal complaints against McKay, Trumbo and Beauchamp.

If that happens, then citizens will know that certain council members are more concerned with protecting themselves than with transparency, which is a bad look for an elected official — especially those who ran a campaign focused on integrity.

The city’s ethics policy was approved in the fall 2019 and in January 2020 we cautioned that it should be a tool of last resort —not a means to pursue personal vendettas, which is what we feared it would become.

Granted, with Britain and Lee waiting until the end of the year to file their complaints, it gives the appearance of trying to get back at certain council members.

But Britain and Lee both said it was a way to alert Kennewick citizens that they must watch the new council closely.

The ethics policy was created in 2019 partly in response to Trumbo’s push to chase down a damaging rumor against fellow Councilman Steve Lee, and it has been used twice since it was put in place. One complaint was against Trumbo for again misusing his city council position and the other was against Britain for personal misconduct.

Trumbo was reprimanded while the ethics officer determined that Britain could not be sanctioned for actions that did not directly relate to his city council position.

The latest ethics complaints are connected to the efforts against Britain.

Lee and Britain say that McKay, Beauchamp and Trumbo knowingly violated the state’s open meeting law to get council members to sign the ethics complaint against Britain in January 2020.

A majority of council members are not allowed by state law to discuss council business outside council meetings, whether in person or electronically.

McKay told the Herald that he learned shortly after the 2020 meeting that should not have contacted a quorum of council members and admitted that what he had done was wrong.

At the time, he had been on the city council for two years. He should have known better.

Trumbo said he did not know who else McKay might have contacted and Beauchamp said he was not sworn in until the Jan. 7, 2020, meeting, so any communication with him would not count as part of a council quorum.

Technically that’s true. But it still goes against the spirit of the state Open Meetings Act.

Britain and Lee have filed an additional complaint against McKay for bypassing the city’s public records officer and helping Roger Lenk download emails and city documents from his email account.

Lenk, a longtime Tri-City government watchdog, who died recently, had filed a request for city documents related to the ethics complaint against Britain.

McKay told the Herald that bringing up an ethics complaint as they are leaving is sour grapes, and it’s because Lee and Britain lost the election.

But Lee said there was no good time to bring up the issues and then suddenly they were out of time. If complaints had been brought up during the investigation on Britain, it would have looked like retaliation, he said.

Britain told the Herald that he was battling cancer most of last year and said he was focused on his health and his re-election campaign.

But he finally decided to file his complaint because he wants the public to know there is an “underbelly” to this group that is the opposite of the honest persona it tries to convey.

With that in mind, the final decision on the city council’s ethics policy should be telling.