The recent repeal of Lewis County Ordinance 1354 is not a “unanimous win for accountability,” as some might spin it. Instead, it is a $500,000 monument to the legal incompetence and ideological stubbornness of our county commissioners.
Despite repeated warnings from the ACLU, health experts and their own colleague, Commissioner Lindsey Pollock, Commissioners Sean Swope and Scott Brummer charged headlong into a legal battle they were destined to lose. In his December ruling, Chief Judge David G. Estudillo made it clear that the ordinance was “patently illegal” from its inception, citing violations of the ADA, religious freedom and state health laws. Because of this failure to perform basic due diligence, Lewis County taxpayers, you and me, are cutting a check for more than $500,000 in attorney fees.
To put that $500,000 waste into perspective, consider the “funding gap” our commissioners constantly complain about. The county currently faces a $2 million shortfall in funding for mandated public defense services — a gap they’ve asked the state to help close. Yet, in one fell swoop, Commissioners Swope and Brummer lit 25% of that entire annual budget on fire to defend an unconstitutional ordinance.
That $500,000 could have instead:
• Fully funded one-quarter of our constitutionally-mandated legal defense gap for the entire year.
• Hired three new sheriff’s deputies or school resource officers.
• Provided over 15,000 nights of emergency shelter for the very people the commissioners claim to be “cleaning up” after.
• Purchased a dozen new transit vans to help our rural seniors reach life-saving medical appointments.
Commissioner Sean Swope, the primary architect of this “Syringe Accountability” policy, claimed he was fighting for the community.
Yet due diligence — a basic requirement of his office — would have shown that the courts do not allow local ordinances to override federal civil rights and state health mandates.
Instead, that money is gone — vanished into a legal sinkhole. It is time we hold our commissioners accountable for treating their ideology as a blank check drawn on the taxpayers’ account. We deserve leadership that prioritizes the law and our budget over performative politics.
KP Gillan
Centralia
