When I heard Erik Martin was resigning as Lewis County’s first county manager to take another job, I was disappointed. The county’s former Public Works Department director excelled in the newly-created position he assumed in 2018.
As manager for more than four years, he worked with Lewis County commissioners, elected officials, department managers and the public, which I’m sure wasn’t easy to do much of the time. An engineer by training, Martin left the county manager job last month for an engineering position as director of Perteet Inc.’s south sound region.
In 2017, Lewis County Commissioners Bobby Jackson, Edna Fund and Gary Stamper faced pressure from One Lewis County to create a home rule charter and switch to a manager-council form of government. At the time, two former employees filed harassment lawsuits, 911 dispatchers were disgruntled and a public outcry ensued over defunding the county’s five senior citizen centers.
Commissioners created a Blue Ribbon task force that recommended hiring a professional county administrator, so they created the position and hired Martin to oversee day-to-day operations at a salary between $100,000 and $125,000, plus benefits.
Martin did a terrific job juggling orders from county commissioners, requests from department heads and employees, and frequent questions from the public as the main point of contact. He was always quick to respond to my questions and answer to the best of his ability.
After he’d been in the job 16 months, I listened to Martin at a meeting outline the roles of the three county commissioners, who set policy, establish the budgets and determine the number of employees in each department. The county manager, he said, looks for efficiencies where employees may duplicate efforts and standardizes the way department heads and elected officials provide budget requests, handle personnel issues and submit reports. He advised commissioners about the effect of policy decisions.
Afterward, I asked him how hiring a county manager had changed the role of the county commissioners.
His answer? A county manager overseeing day-to-day operations freed up commissioners for other work, such as lobbying and interacting with the public.
Fast forward a few years, and Lewis County commissioners have hired a public information officer — basically a buffer between them and the public — at a salary of $57,720 to $77,628, plus benefits, and a lobbyist, who is paid $5,000 a month or $60,000 a year, to accomplish tasks the former county commissioners did themselves.
So, if the county is paying a manager, a PR person, and a lobbyist, what are the three county commissioners doing to earn their $90,886 salary plus benefits?
Now commissioners may be in line for a 10.95% salary increase in June, which would bump their pay to $100,838, plus benefits.
By comparison, the average annual wage in Lewis County was $48,214 in 2020, far below the state’s average of $73,504. In 2021, the median household income was $60,581.
Are commissioners worth twice what average Lewis County residents earn? I have my doubts, especially in light of what appears to be a reduced workload.
I also wonder in light of litigation costs the county may face after recent political rulings rather than fact-based decisions with regard to the proposed 500-acre YMCA camp near Mineral Lake. Both Cispus Learning Center in Randle and Centralia College supported the proposed educational overnight camp.
I’ll admit to being a NIMBY — not-in-my-back-yard opponent of development — when commissioners put the Toledo airport on the short list of sites for a new SeaTac commercial airport. Such a development here would demolish the rural community, which is what drew people to this area in the first place.
However, I have to wonder how the YMCA of Greater Seattle’s summer camp near Mineral could possibly damage the community’s environment. In fact, it could be a boon economically to a region devastated after the curtailment of logging and lumbering in the 1980s. Parents would travel to the region to drop off children, stay in motels, purchase gas and eat meals. The benefits would very likely outweigh any possible negatives.
Some of Mineral’s 140 or so residents voiced opposition to the camp, saying the town’s water system and roadways can’t accommodate 400 campers and a hundred staff members. They contended the camp would “eviscerate” their way of life. Others spoke in support of the YMCA proposal.
But for nearly five decades, Toledo hosted a thousand campers every summer at Camp Singing Wind, a regional Camp Fire Girls camp, without damaging the community. Camp Singing Wind, although smaller than the proposed YMCA camp, provided summer camp counselor jobs and an outdoor classroom for local schools that rented it in the spring.
Two of our county commissioners — Sean Swope and newly elected Scott Brummer — ignored the recommendations of both county staff and the planning commission to rezone the YMCA’s “forest resource land” near Mineral Lake to a “master planned resort.” They continued to oppose the rezone, despite the YMCA’s 47-page lawsuit filed in November that contended the denial of a site-specific rezone for its property north of the lake was “erroneous,” “manifestly arbitrary and capricious,” and “discriminatory.”
The lawsuit contends the denial focused less on the proposed use of the land than on the YMCA’s educational mission, which Swope equated to “indoctrination” as he questioned the organization’s political stances on defunding the police, critical race theory and gender reassignment surgery on minors. It also contended former Lewis County Commissioner Lee Grose denied the rezone because of the YMCA’s location in King County, which Grose said “raped” Lewis County timberlands by shutting down logging. Grose also questioned the YMCA’s plans to let the Nisqually Indian Tribe hunt and fish on its lands, which he described as “setting up a private hunting ground for the tribe.”
Swope contended the YMCA camp isn’t in the public’s interest, even though the YMCA volunteered to continue paying taxes on the land rather than taking it off the tax rolls as a nonprofit.
If Lewis County won’t accept a summer camp, what kind of development will it find acceptable?
At least the second time around, Lewis County Commissioner Lindsey Pollock voted in favor of the rezone, saying the commissioners are to decide as judges rather than play politics in reviewing the request, but she added stipulations for the YMCA to work with the county to mitigate potential traffic, noise, safety and emergency response concerns. Her motion died for lack of a second, even though she was performing the role of a county commissioner in evaluating the rezone request based on land uses allowed by county ordinances rather than the YMCA’s political values.
But still, the vote was 2-1 against rezoning the property, which prompted the YMCA to file a second lawsuit in Thurston County Superior Court, saying Lewis County commissioners violated the nonprofit’s land rights. The YMCA owns 2,000 acres near Mineral Lake but sought a rezone for only 500 acres.
If a judge rules in favor of the YMCA, Lewis County could face huge costs. Who’s going to pay those? Swope and Brummer? Not likely. It’ll come out of the pockets of taxpayers.
And now the county is planning to boost their salaries to more than $100,000 a year? The Lewis County Salary Commission — a citizens advisory group that sets salaries for commissioners’ and recommends pay increases for other county elected officials — voted unanimously to grant the 10.95% raise.
Why not tie salary increases for elected officials to the Social Security Administration’s cost-of-living adjustments? That way, they’ll receive more money to cover inflation increases — at the same rate as those who pay their salaries and have done so for decades.
Perhaps it truly is time for Lewis County to swap its three highly paid county commissioners for five part-time council members who advise the county manager. Maybe then we’d avoid lawsuits based on what has been called the arbitrary, capricious and discriminatory votes of only two people.
•••
Julie McDonald, a former newspaper reporter from Toledo who covered city and county government for a decade, may be reached memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
