By Ralph Schwartz
A lot of smoke — but maybe not much fire — was generated early this week, when Whatcom County Council member Barbara Brenner called out colleague Pete Kremen on KGMI radio. She said Kremen misappropriated a $1.5 million state grant by putting it in the parks improvement fund instead of the conservation futures fund.
The state grant, which paid for the purchase of Lily Point Marine Park in Point Roberts, was to repay the conservation futures fund, which was used to buy the land up front. The council required the money go back to conservation futures in a 2010 ordinance.
Instead, county administration put the money in the parks improvement fund, which can be spent more freely.
Tuesday night, Jan. 29, Brenner had a chance to light into Kremen about the decision.
“I think you completely don’t get the point at all,” Brenner told Kremen, after his explanation about the better flexibility of the parks improvement fund. “It’s not about what fund and where, it’s about a council action that was ignored. Whether it was intentionally or inadvertently, it was ignored.”
The $1.5 million was never spent, so the controversy was one of accounting — and of transparency.
Council members and the public accused Kremen of being less than transparent. The Whatcom Tea Party in particular spoke out against the fund switcheroo.
“It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t a mistake. There was intent,” said Carl Olsen. He said a vote to keep the money in the parks improvement fund would be a vote “to sweep this incident under the rug.”
Lorraine Newman said at the meeting, “This isn’t allowed in the real world of accounting that I live in. … Don’t whitewash this action.”
The council voted 6-0 Tuesday to return the money to conservation futures. (Carl Weimer was absent.)
Kris Ungern spoke at the meeting too. He said the fund switch was “nothing more than a back-door method to find funds for the operations and maintenance of the reconveyance (8,844 of state-controlled forest land around Lake Whatcom the county would assume and convert into a park). I think that’s a little bit underhanded and a little bit devious. I’d rather have things out in the open.”
When asked the following day how the money got into parks improvement, Kremen deferred to then-Deputy Administrator Dewey Dessler, who still works for the county part time as executive project manager.
Dessler was reached by phone on Thursday. He said the money was in fact set aside for the reconveyance. That amount of money could pay for 10 or more years of operations and maintenance, he said.
That year, 2010, was part of the bad times for the county budget. Dessler reminded me this was the time the county was in the midst of seeing revenues fall off by millions of dollars. The county was laying off about 150 people.
“The executive (Kremen) wanted to find a way to maintain flexibility so the County Council and the executive would have money available for management of the property without burdening the general fund,” Dessler said.
Dessler said he recalls informing the council about the fund switch and hearing no dissent. The details of when and how that information was conveyed was unclear in his memory, he said.
When Dessler was told depositing the $1.5 million in parks improvement was in violation of the 2010 ordinance, he quickly said that in that case, a mistake had been made.
“Then obviously we should have checked that,” Dessler said. “But if that box didn’t get checked, then you’re right, we should have gone back and modfied the ordinance to reflect that.”
Council Chairwoman Kathy Kershner admonished staff to “commit to transparency in government” and be more complete in the information they provide council members. Give us the whole truth, not just enough of the truth, she said, so we can make good decisions.
So what’s going on here? Are Brenner and members of the tea party engaging in a smear campaign to undermine the reconveyance? Just about all members of the public who spoke on the issue said Kremen should recuse himself from the fund vote. (He didn’t, and he voted with the rest of the council.) At least one said he should recuse himself from all votes related to the reconveyance. That could be just enough to tip the scales toward rejection of the park.
Council member Ken Mann, who disapproved of the fund switcheroo but who also favors the reconveyance, had some relatively objective perspective on the issue.
“I don’t think people in this community engage in smear campaigns lightly. I think that the people who are outraged and being highly critical were genuinely disturbed and upset by what happened and by their interpretation of the motives behind what happened,” Mann said.
What about those motives, whether they belonged to Kremen, Dessler, Parks Director Mike McFarlane (who was involved in the decision), or all of the above?
“I doubt either Mike or Dewey or Pete, if he knew it, saw it as circumventing the will of the council. I think they saw it as a strategic move to give the county and the council some operating room (financially),” Mann said.
“I’m not just willing to ascribe nefarious and cynical motives to anybody,” Mann went on to say. “I do think that was a mistake and an error of judgment, but I don’t think it was a deliberate attempt to circumvent the council at all.”
Dessler was reached by phone on Thursday. He said the money was in fact set aside for the reconveyance. That amount of money could pay for 10 or more years of operations and maintenance, he said.
BUSTED!
How about Pete and his cronies finding a big rock on a hillside in one of their parks and go to work sculpting a legacy monument to themselves that’ll compete with Mt. Rushmore. Of course they should be chained and under the careful watch of the Sherriff.
Hmm, let’s see who’s faces belong on the rock?
I think the Council weighed the issue and voted 6-0, including Council Person Kremen, to put the Conservation Futures money back where it should have been put in the first place. Done deal. Dunno if Ralph saw it, but the original request for the money stated that, “The Conservation Futures Fund will be reimbursed with state grant funding upon completion of this portion of the project in 2010.”
Someone help me out here. Wasn’t the problem with raiding the Conservation Futures Fund more extensive than this?
As far as setting money aside for Lake Whatcom, big deal. Why wouldn’t the administration do this? For the last 2 years the Council had been directing the staff to take actions to prepare for the reconveyance, including spending $300,000 on land titles and lot transfer fees. The Council stated in writing that it intended to move forward with the Reconveyance. This was all done openly, before the public. I know because I was there. Where were all the CAPR and Tea Party members during these years?
Whenever my parents got mad at me for disobeying a direct directive,
I’d just explain it away as accounting and transparency
then advise them as to how my way was far superior to theirs.
Let’s recall, from onset of the drive to convert resource lands in the watershed to a park, some have pointed to the costs associated with this; to school districts, other county programs, and taxpayers.
On the other hand, proponents of the reconveyance idea argued the financial impacts of their program were de minimis. Early on the idea of using conservation future funds for the proposed park in the commercial forest zone was criticized as an abuse of a program favored by voters interested in protecting resource lands, not eliminate them, not to supplement the park budget.
There are many legitimate reasons to question the reconveyance. It would be nice to have a complete and transparent discussion of, at least, the financial burdens to come … without the behind the scenes chicanery we lived with for years under Kremen.
Many supporters of the park idea complain about the county’s abuse (at great expense) of the Growth Management Act. In this case, they are quite ready to ignore the Act’s fundamental purpose (to protect and preserve resource lands for the industries that rely on them) as well as the legal costs to come.
Will they next raid the Conservation Futures to finance the litigation that will follow reconveyance?
It is interesting that advocates of reconveyance have resisted a public referendum on their idea. Would voters support increasing funding for more parks, given the choice? Should we ask them?