Bound by court order to do so, the Board of Lewis County Commissioners formally approved a “master planned resort” overlay for land owned by the YMCA, though Commissioner Sean Swope said he did so “under protest.”
While the move was a formality following a Dec. 22 order by Thurston County Superior Court Judge Allyson Zipp and public testimony was not accepted, Swope sought to defend himself after Zipp found “impermissible racial animus, bias, and infringement of the YMCA’s protected free speech rights through an intent to restrain speech and a desire to prevent the YMCA from speaking in Lewis County” motivated the board’s decision to deny the rezone twice.
“The scenario described did not occur,” Swope said Tuesday, reading a portion of the judge’s ruling. “There was no effort made to restrain speech or prevent the YMCA from expressing themselves. I can assert that at no time was the YMCA’s right to free or protected speech violated. Asking questions is not a violation of a person’s rights.”
Voting yes “under protest,” Swope added the “action should not be misconstrued as an admission of guilt regarding this specific matter.”
The move by the Lewis County Commissioners is the latest chapter of a rezoning process that’s included two public hearings and sparked a lawsuit by the YMCA of Greater Seattle. Both the Washington State Attorney General’s Office and the Nisqually Tribe filed Amicus briefs in support of the YMCA.
According to the ruling, commissioners had no legal basis for their land use decision. Lewis County Deputy Prosecutor Barb Russell said the county opted not to appeal the decision, as it could then be responsible for $500,000 in attorney fees and legal costs for the YMCA.
“The court finding just reaffirms that there’s the right of property owners of Lewis County to use their property and not be subject to political or religious tests,” Commissioner Lindsey Pollock said Tuesday.
While Swope did so “under protest,” the action was a victory for The YMCA of Greater Seattle, which hopes to develop into a summer camp on the 500 acres of land.
The move Tuesday came more than a year after Swope asked a YMCA representative questions irrelevant to the decision, which included inquiries on the organization’s stances on critical race theory, defunding the police, gender reassignment surgery for minors and “biological truth,” according to previous reporting by The Chronicle.
Following the hearing, where commissioners unanimously denied the rezone, the YMCA filed a lawsuit in Thurston County Superior Court and wrote in a court petition that the decision was “erroneous” and “discriminatory.”
“He has said that it is not the reason he made this decision, and I believe him, but the record doesn’t look like it when it’s been discussed,” Russell told Mineral residents during a community meeting on Jan. 2.
At the Jan. 2 meeting, multiple attendees asked whether commissioners could be “coached” in the future to avoid a similar situation. Citing attorney-client privilege, Russell said she could not disclose what, if any, counsel Swope received before the meeting, though she said she believed Swope sought to voice the concerns of his constituents even though it “wasn’t legally OK.”
“In the lawsuit, the YMCA alleged the county followed improper procedure by holding two hearings, had an erroneous interpretation of the law, that the decision was not supported by the evidence, that it was an improper application of law to the facts, and that the decision was unconstitutional because it was based, in part, on bias,” Russell said. “Those were the allegations. And we lost, at least in part, on most of them.”
The lawsuit was put on hold temporarily while commissioners reopened the hearing in February 2023, where Swope and Brummer voted against the rezone and cited concerns about strained law enforcement and emergency services resources and the environment.
“We weren’t applying a religious test to that land owner. It was being applied, from my standpoint, completely upon the impacts to the community, and the environmental concerns,” Commissioner Scott Brummer said Tuesday. “And so the record, I think, clearly shows that.”
Pollock reversed her vote in the second hearing and was the sole yes vote.
“I think everything the sheriff said at that February hearing was true, that there is not adequate law enforcement coverage in East County,” Russell said on Jan. 2. “And the biggest reason is there’s just not enough personnel to provide that coverage in a very rural and geographically broad area.”
According to Russell, though, the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office did not formally voice concerns about a lack of coverage in the area on an adequate facilities form sent to the department.
In the ruling, Zipp wrote that concerns over law enforcement coverage in the area, among other reasons cited by the commissioners, were premature as “the issue underlying these bases for denial typically are and can be addressed at the project stage and, where necessary, can be mitigated.”
