City Council foursome accused of another open meetings act violation

LaFave, Halvorson, Young, Boudreau sharing hundreds of private phone calls, texts including at least 30 exchanges during day of a controversial executive session on Jan. 25

The Longview City Council’s four-member majority has been exchanging hundreds of private phone calls among themselves, further fueling suspicions that they are making major decisions in secret in violation of state law and their campaign promises to improve city transparency.

Records of the phone calls were obtained by former Councilman Mike Wallin and Longview resident Thomas Samuels under a state open records request.

Wallin and Samuels say the records show that Kalei LaFave, Erik Halvorson, Keith Young and Mayor/Councilman Spencer Boudreau colluded to call the executive session on Jan. 25 when the foursome tried to hold then-City Manager Kris Swanson accountable for what turned out to be a clerical error.

Wallin, a former city councilman, and Samuels shared their findings with some members of the public on Thursday.

So far they’ve obtained phone records from Jan. 1 to mid February, and they’re expecting more disclosures.

Wallin said Councilman Young has so far failed to furnish any records. Young did not respond to requests for comment Thursday. He is required to comply with information requests by the state open records law and could face fines if he fails to do so.

At Thursday night’s council meeting, Wallin complimented Boudreau, Halvorson and LaFave for furnishing their phone records. It was one of the few olive branches to be offered so far during the new council’s brief and conflicted tenure.

It’s legal for city council members to occasionally confer one-on-one in private. However, it’s illegal for them to hold a series of private discussions or make a de facto decision so that it can be rubber-stamped in a public meeting. New council members — which include Halvorson, LaFave and Young, all elected in November —typically undergo training to remain compliant with the state Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA).

The phone records show the new council members have exchanged dozens and even hundreds of private phone calls with one another. LaFave’s log from three different phone numbers, for example, lists 144 calls with Young, Halvorson and Boudreau from Jan. 1 to Feb. 14.

Such a call volume is a sharp contrast to the small number of one-on-one calls that other current and former council members say they make or take with their council colleagues.

As a councilmember, Wallin said, he conferred “daily with the mayor, multiple times daily, but honestly not quite like this flurry. Much less frequently with the other (council) members.”

Councilwoman Ruth Kendall shared a spreadsheet with me indicating that in 2023 she averaged two calls a month with then-Mayor MaryAlice Wallis. She averaged fewer than one a month with the other council members. 

Councilwoman Angie Wean said she has fewer than a dozen calls with other members a month.

George Raiter — a former county commissioner and city council member who was Longview’s mayor from 1982 to 1984 — said he rarely had phone calls with other council members. “One, two, three, four a month,” he said.

“It’s crazy,” he said of the number of calls the new council members are exchanging.

Thursday, Wallin expressed concern that the call data suggests that members of the four-member council majority are holding serial meetings in private.

“They could be doing this with parks, with police, with the city budget, but we don’t know” because discussions and decisions appear to be made privately, he said.

Council decisions on March 13 to fire City Manager Kris Swanson and hire retired Longview Police Chief as interim manager had the feeling that they were made ahead of time. They came without prior public discussion or, in the case of Duscha’s hiring, any presentation of qualifications or consideration of alternatives. Duscha is a close ally of LaFave.

At Thursday’s City Council meeting, Samuels lashed out at the four council members, accusing them of deception and violating the public trust with secrecy “that is as indefensible as it is undeniable.”

Several other speakers commended the council for making overdue changes, but Longview resident Mike O’Neill told the council he can’t see how the four members all decided independently to fire Swanson and hire Duscha. “You’ve broken our trust with rash behavior,” he said.

As is customary in council protocols, council members did not respond during the public comment period. Mayor Boudreau did not answer my Thursday request for comment about the phone records. Officials usually clam up when they are subject to a lawsuit.

Wallin, Samuels and Longview resident John Melink have filed suit alleging the council foursome violated the Open Meetings Act in how they hired and negotiated a contract with Duscha. They are part of a group of about 70 citizens who have banded together to watchdog the council.

Wallin, Samuels and Melink plan to add the allegations about the Jan. 25 executive session to their lawsuit, which gets its first court hearing on May 8 following two postponements. Lawyers for the defendant council members are seeking dismissal, saying it’s not illegal for two council members to negotiate a contract and that there’s no evidence of a quorum of members privately making decisions about it.

A large volume of phone calls in itself does not prove a violation of the law, because records do not reveal what was said. However, Wallin and Samuels say several text messages on Jan. 25 infer that a flurry of calls that day shows that the four council members privately decided to hold an executive session that night to hold Swanson accountable for what turned out to be a clerical error.

At the end of the Jan. 25 meeting, Councilwoman LaFave asked for an executive session. The council minority — Angie Wean, Ruth Kendall and MaryAlice Wallis — objected, but LaFave’s motion passed 4-3. During the closed meeting, the council majority called Swanson to account for an errant legislative funding request for homeless programs including Hope Village, the city’s pallet home project for the homeless. The request contained a clerical error for which the city’s lobbyist took blame.

The next day, Swanson sent the council an email of rebuke for discrediting her over someone else’s honest mistake.

Using the phone logs, Samuels produced a “clock” diagram (see below) showing the sequence of texts and phone calls that started at 12:04 p.m. and ended at 11:38 p.m. on Jan. 25.

It started when state Sen. Jeff Wilson, R-Longview, texted LaFave about the discrepancy in the city’s funding request. Two texts on the same subject followed, one at 1:28 p.m. between LaFave and Halvorson, another at 2:23 p.m. between Halvorson and Josh Weiss, the city lobbyist. A final one (sent in two parts) was sent to LaFave just after at 10 p.m. following the executive session and council adjournment. It compliments LaFave: “Proud of you Kalei. You stuck to your guns when it mattered.” It appears o have been sent by Halvorson.

Any reasonable person would conclude that the four-member majority colluded in violation of the state Open Public Meetings Act prohibition against holding “serial” meetings, Wallin said.

“The four concurred on the motion for the executive session following a full day of discussing the issue among themselves out of public view,” Wallin said.

The council majority “falsely accused Manager Swanson of misconduct concerning the legislative requests. … (knowing) this simple clerical error was made by the city lobbyist …. These ridiculous accusations were then used by the council majority and members of the public over the ensuing weeks to defame Swanson,” according to a statement authored by Wallin and Samuels.

Mayor Spencer Boudreau did not respond to my request for comment on that assertion or the strings of Jan. 25 communications. LaFave did not respond to requests for comment for this story Friday.\

Halvorson deferred comment to his attorney, Nick Power of Friday Harbor, who did not immediately respond.

Wallin said his group expects to file more OPMA claims against the foursome. He also said it is concerning that Councilman Young has not complied with a Jan. 30 public record request, especially regarding a resolution be attempted to introduce just as the council was set to adjourn on Feb. 8.

Wallin said Young has not turned over the original version of a resolution. He withdrew the resolution without distributing it but finally introduced it a week later. That document called for a performance audit of Assistant City Manager Ann Rivers, apparently to see if her role as a state legislator from Clark County prevents her from putting in a full time effort for the city. (Rivers says she makes up lost time by working vacation time and weekends. The council has not acted on it.)

Wallin and others suspect that Young altered an official document and that the original resolution was a first try at firing Swanson. The copy they’ve received was an edited version. They’ve asked for the original and have so far been rebuffed. 

Young did not reply to my request for comment on this matter. Boudreau, however, defended him, saying he saw the Feb. 8 resolution immediately before the meeting and that indeed, it sought the audit of Rivers.

“The way it was written was troublesome and it needed to be significantly revised if it was to move forward,” Boudreau said by email.

“I think it is absolutely disingenuous to accuse someone or repeat this rumor that someone is ‘refusing’ to comply,” the mayor said.

However, Boudreau’s account conflicts with the video record of the meeting: Young only withdrew the resolution after the city attorney said it violated the council’s policy against surprise issues.  LaFave was willing to sign the document, and no member publicly raised concerns about the way it was drafted, whatever it said. If it was poorly written, why would Young have tried to introduce it in the first place?

The easiest way out of this conflict is for Young to produce the original document — and comply with the law.

The diagram below is a round-the-clock timeline of Jan. 25 phone calls and text messages among Longview City Council members Kalei LaFave (upper right photo), Erik Halvorson (middle right), Spencer Boudreau (bottom right) and Keith Young (lower left); State Sen. Jeff Wilson (upper left); and Longview contract city lobbyist Josh Weiss (middle left). It was produced by Thomas Samuels based on records he and former councilman Mike Wallin obtained through the state open public records law. They say it shows evidence of a illegal “serial meeting” that resulted in an executive session to put City Manager Kris Swanson under scrutiny. It should be read clockwise starting from the top. The lines between the photos just show connections, not the number of calls or texts shared.