As former chair of the freeholders board, I would like to set the record straight about Judith Anderson’s freeholder charter process assertions in her Sept. 6 letter, “Irregularities in charter process.”
In April some of the freeholders became aware of the fact that in 2002, the only other time a home rule charter had been on a Clark County ballot, the Board of Clark County Commissioners funded the production of an informational brochure and paid for it to be mailed to every household in the county. We really wanted the citizens to receive a factual summary of the charter but discovered that such a mailing would cost the county about $37,000.
In May freeholder Randy Mueller informed our board that under Washington state law, the county auditor has the authority to place this type of information in a local voter’s pamphlet. Further, it was estimated that this would cost $2,000 instead $37,000. The freeholder board passed a motion to authorize the executive committee of our board to provide a summary to the auditor’s office. The elected freeholder board as a body voted to inform the citizens of the work they had done. This was not done by “charter proponents.” It was done by a board who had worked together with respect and reason for months to develop a charter for better governance in Clark County.
Nan Henriksen
Camas
