UPDATED: One Lewis County to File Lawsuit Regarding Commission’s Freeholder Map

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With just more than a month before ballots are sent out, leaders of the effort to re-draft Lewis County’s system of government will sue Lewis County over the way county commissioners determined freeholders — 15 people tasked with writing the new charter — will be chosen.

Centralia-Chehalis Chamber of Commerce Director Alicia Bull confirmed Friday afternoon that One Lewis County met Friday morning and decided to pursue the lawsuit. The Chamber board also took a majority vote to support the decision. One Lewis County is a political action committee formed by the Chamber.

Bull said the organization hopes for a hearing as soon as September 21. The suit will be filed in Thurston County.

In a letter to the county sent on Aug. 31, lawyers for One Lewis County said the political action committee is prepared to file suit if county officials don’t meet demands to scrap the freeholder plan and call for a special election early next year with new district guidelines. The county says it won’t acquiesce to those demands, and One Lewis County is meeting early Friday morning to discuss its next move.

“They responded to our attorneys with the fact that they are not going to respond, so we've got to figure out how to move forward,” said Alicia Bull, executive director of the Centralia-Chehalis Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber launched One Lewis County in 2017.

At issue are the 15 sub-districts drafted by the county for the freeholder election. If voters opt for a new charter, they will simultaneously choose 15 freeholders who will be responsible for crafting the new county government. State law requires freeholders to be apportioned by either legislative or county commissioner districts, proportional to population. Lewis County commissioners chose to further divide each of the county’s three commissioner districts into five equally-apportioned sub-districts. According to One Lewis County, that violates the Washington Constitution.

“There’s no authority for that in the state Constitution,” said Gerry Alexander, the former Chief Justice of the Washington Supreme Court who co-signed the letter as an associated counsel. “It violates the plain language of the Constitution. There’s no provision for dividing the districts into sub-districts.”

Bull said the Chamber and One Lewis County are relying on Alexander’s counsel, noting that One Lewis County does not want their efforts to being the home rule charter process to be adversely affected by a questionably legal freeholder election process.

“It has to be done right and fair,” she said Friday.

The letter notes that no other counties have ever attempted to create freeholder sub-districts. Heather Burgess, one of the attorneys who signed the letter, said the challenge — should One Lewis County decide to file suit — would break new legal ground.

“As far as we can tell, there’s no other case law directly on point interpreting that provision,” she said.

Added Alexander: “This is totally unprecedented.”

County officials feel their actions stayed within the guidelines of using commissioner districts, and officials said they have seen nothing to indicate that further narrowing each race violates the law.

“It seems like an unfortunate attempt to stop the process from going forward,” Lewis County prosecutor Jonathan Meyer said last month, as rumors circulated about a potential challenge. “There’s nothing in the law to suggest that (sub-districts are not allowed). I believe that the method adopted by the commissioners is legal, and we'll defend it.”

Reached Thursday after word of the attorney letter spread, Meyer said the county has no plans to meet One Lewis County’s demands.



“I know of no changes forthcoming,” he said.

The letter to the county was sent by Burgess and Alexander, representing Fred Rider, Kelly Smith-Johnston and the Centralia-Chehalis Chamber of Commerce.

In it, the lawyers acknowledge there is not time for county commissioners to adopt a new plan that would allow for the election of freeholders by commission district for the November election. They call for the county to rescind its sub-district resolution and initiate the home rule charter process on its own, culminating in a new special election that would presumably take place next February.

According the Alexander, the lawyers are now waiting to hear from One Lewis County if they want to file the suit. They would plan to file in Thurston County and hope for a hearing on Sept. 21 or 28, a process that would be expedited with the election fast approaching.

“Our clients are going to have to decide in the next day or so whether they want to commence suit,” he said.

According to Commissioner Edna Fund, the sub-district plan was created to give residents from small areas a voice. She said she was convinced of the plan after a meeting in which a Winlock resident noted that it shares a commission district with Chehalis. If five Chehalis residents were to run for freeholder in that district, the resident said, hometown voters in the higher-population city might allow them to claim all five of the district’s seats.

“My chance of representing my area is nil,” Fund said she was told. “Do I even have a chance?”

By breaking the districts into distinct geographical areas, the commission believed it was preventing residents in smaller areas from getting crowded out. Fund defended the plan before One Lewis County’s official challenge was received, but she expressed confidence it was in good standing.

Its opponents see it differently. In their view, one subdistrict within a commission district might be home to five qualified candidates, but the narrowing of the boundaries will only allow one of them to serve as freeholder.

“It really dilutes the voting power of people within any subdistrict,” Alexander said. “It’s undemocratic.”

The letter also notes that if the three commissioner districts do not reflect an adequate geographical diversity for the freeholder positions, “then the same would appear to hold true for the three county commissioners currently elected from the same districts. … (T)he Board has arbitrarily elevated the value of geographic diversity over the voter’s right to choose those most fit and qualified to serve as freeholders.”

Burgess declined to comment on the substance of the argument, but said she had not yet filed the suit that was threatened in the letter.

“The letter speaks for itself as far as our interpretation of what the word ‘shall’ means,” she said.

Bull said One Lewis County will be meeting at 8:30 a.m. Friday to discuss its next steps, presumably whether to file suit.