Harris accepts Vancouver panel’s finding of ethics violations

Vancouver City Councilor Jeanne Harris sent an e-mail to her colleagues and the city manager Monday afternoon, saying that she accepts a report by an ethics committee and apologized again for her actions during a Sept. 13 council meeting.

A few hours later, the city council unanimously agreed to strip her of all council-appointed board and commission positions and offer a letter of reprimand.

Harris, who has been on the council since 1996, is on many influential boards and commissions, including C-Tran and the Regional Transportation Council. She was to chair both those boards next year. The council’s sanction against her will last until 2012.

The anger displayed by Harris on Sept. 13 toward anti-tolling and light-rail speakers, along with Mayor Tim Leavitt and Councilor Jeanne Stewart, sparked calls from members of the public for her ousting. A YouTube video has had more than 110,000 views and has been on national news.

Harris is in Germany on a privately funded fellowship until Oct. 19, and wrote in Monday at 3:30 p.m. to respond to the ethics report.

“I’ve read the recommendation of the ethics committee,” she wrote. “This has been a very difficult time for everyone involved and its most important that we move forward and move on. The ethics committee has spent much time reviewing the facts of this incident and made its recommendation to council.

“The decision of council will be the appropriate action. There are no words to describe how I feel about what happened. How I reacted was unacceptable and I take full responsibility for my actions.

“To my community, my family, my fellow councilmembers and mayor and to the employees of the City of Vancouver I’m asking you to accept my sincerest heartfelt apology for my actions at the council meeting on September 13, 2010.”

Harris was found by the ethics committee — Councilors Jack Burkman, Larry Smith and Pat Campbell — to have violated the city ethics policy by failing to treat Leavitt and Stewart with respect. Smith and Burkman filed the ethics complaint; Smith was chairman of the committee.

“I felt the line had been crossed in how we deal with one another and how we deal with citizens,” Smith said. “Any body … has an obligation to police itself.”

Harris demanded that Leavitt “gavel down” a community speaker and quarreled twice with Stewart.

The ethics committee also chided her for the way she dealt with anti-tolling and light-rail citizen speakers; however, the council’s ethics policy has no stipulations on how a councilor must interact with the public. The council is planning to update its policies before the end of the year.

City Attorney Ted Gathe has said that Harris would have had to commit moral turpitude or a criminal action for the city council to remove her from her seat. She is up for re-election in 2013.

For members of the city council, Monday’s actions were a chance to move on.

“This whole thing has been very hard on the city, the city council and Councilmember Harris,” Burkman said. “I do believe this is an honest and sincere apology.”

Leavitt also said that he welcomes Harris back to the council when she returns. He said that elected officials, like others, can all have bad days, and commended her 16 years of service on the city council.

“I agree her apology is sincere,” he said. “From my perspective, she is a good policymaker … she’s a good steward of public resources and she is a good person. I’m sorry this happened.”

Stewart remained mum on Harris and her apology, but did say that with both the hunt for a new city manager and approval of the city budget set for this month, she was glad to be done with the ethics investigation.

“I look forward to completing this business tonight, and hopefully looking forward to the future,” Stewart said.

Andrea Damewood: 360-735-4542 or andrea.damewood@columbian.com.