Sunday, December 31, 2006
Brown's dishonesty comes back to haunt him...
All the questions about newly elected County Commissioner Josh Brown's qualifications to hold office may become moot if a lawsuit filed by Central Kitsap resident Robert Ross is successful. In the suit, Ross claims Brown lied about his official residency and doesn't live in the district he was elected from, nor has he ever lived in the apartment he gave as his residence.
When asked why he filed the suit, Ross simply answered, "If he'll commit fraud to get elected, there's no telling what he'll do once he's in there." Ross then referred any additional questions to his attorney.
Brown's honesty and ethics were also an issue during the campaign. There were questions about his college degree, plus well-documented evidence of him taking opposing positions on the NASCAR issue. When speaking in front of environmentalists, Brown claimed to be opposed the project, while favoring it in front of business leaders, stating he believed the county could cut a better deal than the one being offered.
I have editorialized about what I view as Brown's basic dishonesty on numerous previous occasions, and won't bore you with it again. But I do believe it has come back to bite him in the ass. But from the information I was able to gather writing this story, there's a LOT more than what went into it. I was basically restricted by time and space considerations, so all the details couldn't be reported. But based on what I've personally seen and the folks I talked to, the facts are there and it appears they've got a pretty solid case against Brown. There's been a lot of work done documenting the evidence, and I don't think they would go out on that kind olimb without having the documentation and facts to back it up.
What could perhaps be the biggest local news story of 2006 -- including the election of Brown -- was reported first by the Business Journal. The story broke literally minutes before presstime, and appears on Page 5 of the print edition of the January issue. It also was sent out in a special breaking news email to the paper's regular email subscribers on December 29.
The suit was filed in Kitsap County minutes before the official close of business for 2006. According to Ross's attorney Michele Rodosevich of the Seattle law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine, only Brown was named in the suit, and not the county. Normally, county officeholders are defended by lawyers from the prosecutor's office. But since the suit was filed before Brown officially took office and didn't name the county, it also means the taxpayers won't pay to defend him, and Brown will need to engage and pay his own defense attorney.
"The lawsuit doesn't contend the county did anything wrong," stated Radosevich. "What's wrong is that Josh Brown gave the wrong information on his Declaration of Candidacy. You have to give the address where you actually reside and you have to live in the district from which you run. There's been some investigating done, and it appears he actually lives with his parents in Poulsbo, which is in Commissioner District One."
That information was verified by Larry Walsh of Bayside Professional Investigations. Brown claims to live in an apartment in an 18-unit complex on Perry Avenue in Bremerton. But according to Walsh, although Brown's name appears on the building's roster, he believes the apartment is vacant and has not been lived in. Walsh claims to have visited the apartment on at least 15 different occasions, at various times of the day and night, and that he never witnessed any activity at the unit, and that no one ever answered the door. "I suspect he rented it, or someone else rented it for him," Walsh said. "All the blinds are drawn and there's no lights on."
The building has six units on the second floor where the apartment is situated. Walsh said he interviewed four of the five other tenants directly adjacent to the unit, including the man across the hall and the woman next door, showing them 8 x 10 color photos of Brown. All of them claimed never to have seen Brown, or his vehicle, at the complex. They also claimed not to have seen or heard anyone in the apartment in question for several months, with most of the neighbors believing it was still empty. "The last any of them knew, it was still vacant, and one neighbor said the last tenant she recalled living there was a Mexican family," said Walsh.
Subsequently, three of the five other tenants on that floor have given legal depositions stating those facts as well.
"I'm fairly sure he's still living with his parents." When asked why he believed that, the investigator answered, "I found him at his parent's house on more than one occasion and know for a fact he spent the night there." When questioned how he could be so certain, Walsh answered, "Because I would see him leave the next morning."
The case will have to wind its way through the legal system, so it may be some time before it's resolved. In the event Brown is found to have misrepresented his residence, he will have to step down as commissioner and could possibly face criminal charges as well. "It appears he lied to the elections people as well as the Department of Licensing about his true residence," said Walsh. "Those are crimes."
What happens if Brown steps down? The remaining county commissioners, Jan Angel and Chris Endresen, will appoint someone to fill the position until the next general election in either 2007 or 2008. If it's 2008, that raises the possibility of all three commissioners being up for re-election at the same time, as both Endresen and Angel face the voters then. However, there is an election in 2007, but it's unclear if it meets the standard for a "general election" for the purposes of electing a county commissioner.
I'm willing to bet that they appoint former commissioner Patty Lent, a moderate, who was ousted in the Republican primary by conservative property rights activist Jack Hamilton. Brown kicked Hamilton's butt by almost 6,000 votes.
According to Radosevich, there is also no law governing the political considerations of the appointment. Usually, the political party of the person vacating a public office nominates three people for consideration and the commissioners pick from those. However, after researching the statues at the request of the Business Journal, Radosevich could find no specific county or state statue dictating the political party of a commissioner had any standing, and in fact, it appears they are specifically exempt from the statue governing other political appointments.
"The commissioners will have to find someone they both agree on," she said, "regardless of political party. It appears the political parties have no standing in this matter." She added that the law states that in the event the commissioners couldn't agree on a replacement, the governor would select the successor.
Due to the timing of the filing of this lawsuit -- minutes before the start of a major holiday weekend -- neither Commissioners Chris Endresen or Jan Angel could be reached for comment, nor did Brown respond to several attempts to contact him before presstime.
In my view, this is just another shining example of the failure of the forced primary system that brought us two generally unacceptable choices. Yes, Brown beat Hamilton by a huge margin. However, the sheer number of Democrats in Kitsap County, coupled with the nationwide Democratic tide, were also a factor.
And you have wonder... Convential wisdom said Patty Lent was "safe." She beat former incumbent Democrat Tim Botkin like a red-headed stepchild in 2002, meaning thousand of Democrats crossed over and voted for her. She was also popular with a lot of local D's because she tended to vote with Democrat Chris Endresen more often that Republican Jan Angel. So, what if Jim Rye hadn't challenged Sheriff Steve Boyer in the Democratic primary? Since there was no Republican challenger, the primary dictated the winner of that race. Would all of those Democrats -- and more than likely a fair number of Republicans -- that took Democratic ballots to insure the popular Boyer stayed in office, taken Republican ballots instead to vote for Lent?
I believe Jack Hamilton beat Lent because a small but vocal Republican minority was unhappy with her votes on the Critical Areas Ordinance and Impact Fees, and mobilized that unhappy core group. While she was thought to be "safe" because Hamilton is thought of as an extreme right-winger who under ordinary circumstances wouldn't have made the ballot, that proved to be a thinking error because voters were more worried about the challenge to Boyer than Lent.
Had Lent faced Brown instead of Hamilton, I believe she would have cruised to re-election, but the Boyer-Rye primary race was the monkey wrench that brought this whole situation about.
This also makes you wonder about Brown's political future. Democrats from Norm Dicks on down to the mayors, to union leaders, to the precinct committee people, all put their personal credibility on the line to support this guy. Now they're sitting there with serious egg on their faces. Will they give him a second opportunity to embarrass them?
THE ABOVE ARTICLE POSTED BY West Sound Politics @ 12/31/2006 09:43:00 AM
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