Longview changes lawyer in slow-moving open meetings lawsuit against councilors

Plaintiffs, frustrated at slow pace of proceedings, accuse defense attorneys of deliberately delaying case

Another month, another delay in the 15-month-old lawsuit that accuses four Longview City Council members of violating the state Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA).

The city of Longview this month hired a new contract lawyer — Meagan Clark of Spokane — to represent the city in the case. Clark, who specializes in municipal law, replaces Jeff Myers, a contract attorney from Olympia who had been advising the city in the OPMA case.

City spokeswoman Angel Abel said Myers is too booked with other work to handle the case.

Clark, a partner in the Etter, McMahon, Lamberson, Van Wert & Oreskovich law firm, is contracted for an amount not to exceed $30,000 at rates of $300 an hour for partners, $250 for associates and $150 interns and paralegals, Abel said.

Coupled with Clark’s need to get up to speed on the case, these costs will aded to the ever-growing legal and other expenses of the council foursome’s decision to fire City Manager Kris Swanson without cause in March last year.

Kalei LaFave, Keith Young, Spencer Boudreau and Erik Halvorson voted to require the city to defend them even though the city’s liability insurance pool warned it wouldn’t pay their legal costs.

So far their lawyers have billed the city for $52,400, up from $45,000 at the start of 2025. Eric Carlson, the attorney for LaFave and Boudreau, has not submitted a bill since Oct. 2.

The city also has paid a $747.50 bill to Myers.

Fallout from the Swanson firing for related worker buyouts, settlements, job searches and consultant fees has cost the city in excess of half million dollars.

The OPMA case has seen little action since it was initially filed on March 30 last year. The three the citizen plaintiffs contend the council members’ attorneys appear to be playing defense by delay.

“It’s so frustrating. It has been an eye-opener for me,” said John Melink, one of the plaintiffs who brought the suit.

George Erb, board secretary of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, said the length of time it takes to resolve OPMA and public records cases “is all over the map. Some lawsuits quickly lead to negotiations and settlement within a few months. Others go to trial judgment and on to appeals — and last years.”

Erb said WashCOG’s attorneys caution against asserting that defense attorneys deliberately drag out OPMA cases.

“Litigation can drag on for any number of reasons, some valid, some not, and often it’s impossible to determine unless you’re deep in the case.”

Lawyers for the four council members did not return requests for comment emailed to them Monday morning.

Nevertheless, several delays in the Longview case raise legitimate concerns. The defendant council members, for example, still have not answered hundreds of questions — called interrogatories — the plaintiffs’ lawyers filed on November 24 and which were due to be answered within a month. Just as the answers were due, defense lawyers — Nick Power of Friday Harbor and Erik Carlson of Chehalis — announced they would not answer and would seek to have the case dismissed unless the city were added as a defendant.

The defense lawyers contended the city should be included to protect any interests it might have in the case. But there seems to be no good reason for delaying answers to questions about the council members’ communications and private meetings, which go to the heart of the case.

In addition, the attorney for Melink and the other plaintiffs agreed in January to add the city to the lawsuit. But Carlson, who represents Boudreau and LaFave, didn’t sign an agreement on the matter until May 7.

It’s not like Carlson and Power and the council members didn’t know months earlier that the interrogatories would be coming. The case originally was filed on March 30 last year and was amended on Aug. 15.

The plaintiffs —Melink, Thomas Samuels and former Longview Councilman Mike Wallin — did not initially sue the city. The city is only a party now because the defense insisted on it.

The judge in the case, Pacific County Superior Court Donald J. Richter, initially added the city to the suit in May last year. He reversed himself on a technicality a month later. In another example of delay, the defendant lawyers waited six months before raising the issue again.

The suit alleges that the council foursome met outside of public meetings to arrive at the decision to fire Swanson and hire police chief Jim Duscha as a temporary replacement. The state OPMA prohibits elected bodies from making decisions through a “daisy chain” series of private discussions.

This situation is further proof that the state’s open government laws — OPMA and state Open Public Records Act— have little teeth.

Both laws are “self-enforcing,” which means law and justice agencies don’t investigate but leave it to members of the public to pursue violations through the civil filings in the court system. This forces private citizens to take cases to court on their own dime, while agencies and officials often use government money to defend themselves.

This obviously could be the case in almost any grievance against public agencies. Yet it seems to me that the public should have stronger recourse involving a matter so fundamental as open governance.

This is an imbalanced situation that discourages openness.