We’ll get the accolades out of the way early: Congratulations to Ed Barnes. The retired labor leader has been selected as the third member of the Clark County Board of Commissioners and is slated to be sworn in next week.
Now, with the softball portion of this presentation out of the way, it’s time for some hardball. It’s time to consider the direction the county will head now that sitting Commissioners David Madore and Tom Mielke have chosen Barnes from among three nominees offered by the local Democratic party to replace Steve Stuart. Barnes, after all, is a man who not long ago publicly told Madore and Mielke at a board meeting, “You guys have killed Clark County.”
That is the kind of straight shooting that has made Barnes a significant figure in this county. He frequently has publicly criticized Madore and Mielke for their indefensible hiring of state Sen. Don Benton as the county’s director of environmental services, to the point where Benton threatened to sue Barnes. And, in a 2008 article in The Columbian, longtime state Rep. Denny Heck said, “Ed Barnes has been one of the most effective political figures in Clark County in the last generation.”
In other words, Republicans Madore and Mielke have not appointed a wallflower of a Democrat to sit with them on the board. And that is a good thing for Clark County. “I think what has to happen is for someone to bring some common sense and bring parties together,” Barnes said in March as he announced his candidacy for the position.
That, as they say, might be more easily said than done, and the time that Madore and Mielke took in choosing Stuart’s successor reflects the difficult situation they were facing. Barnes finally won out over Craig Pridemore, a former state senator and Clark County commissioner, and Kelly Love Parker, president of the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce. Part of the process included a questionnaire for candidates featuring loaded queries that read like campaign speeches from the sitting commissioners, along with a possible violation of public-meeting laws as Madore and Mielke failed to reach agreement on an appointment during executive session. In other words, the circus was still in town.
The difficulty, with Barnes as the only Democrat on the board, will be to retain his status as a caustic outsider while helping to bring peace to the board. In a comment on Columbian.com, Pridemore wrote: “What’s needed right now is someone with the intelligence and genuine integrity to point out when the rule of law and fundamental human decency are violated by the county. Eddie Barnes has the character and tenacity to do just that.”
We wish him well, because there are plenty of important issues facing the county. The hiring of Benton is one, as it remains an egregious violation of the public trust, but complaining about it should not be Barnes’ primary mission as a commissioner. The county’s waiver of development fees is another, and Barnes should push the other board members to provide proof that the fee holiday is beneficial rather than relying upon demagoguery to defend it. And if Madore tries to move the county to support an east county bridge across the Columbia River, we would expect Barnes to provide the voice of reason regarding the unworkable proposal.
In the end, Barnes likely will be limited to the role of gadfly in opposition to the two Republican commissioners. It could well be the most thankless job in the entire county, but Barnes just might be the ideal person to handle it.
