Slapping around citizens who demand accountability

THE aroma in Tacoma still lingers, but don't blame pulp mills or garbage dumps. The public stench comes from a retaliatory lawsuit filed by Pierce County government against one of the state's most effective civic watchdogs.

The David in this David-and-Goliath battle is CLEAN, a grass-roots, nonprofit organization that stands for "Citizens for Leaders with Ethics and Accountability Now!" The group includes an eclectic mix of Reform Party members, libertarians, Republicans, Democrats and independent community activists who volunteer their time to fight for term limits, against corporate welfare, and in defense of open meetings, public disclosure, fair elections, ethical standards and whistle-blower protection.

Prominent CLEAN leaders include veteran campaign consultant Sherry Bockwinkel of Tacoma, anti-corporate welfare lawyer Steve Eugster of Spokane, 1998 state Supreme Court candidate Kris Sundberg of Mercer Island, and public-interest lawyer Shawn Newman of Olympia.

CLEAN members helped expose illegal spending practices by the state's taxpayer-subsidized political caucuses. Their vocal complaints led to changes by the state attorney general's office, which ended blanket confidentiality orders in settlements that arose from the caucus scandal. Public pressure by CLEAN also led to the creation of the state Executive Ethics Board.

Although the group's shoestring efforts to stop construction of the publicly funded baseball and football stadiums in Seattle have been unsuccessful, CLEAN's tenacious campaign has raised invaluable public awareness of the state's constitutional prohibition on the lending of public credit to private business - and the willingness of the Legislature and state Supreme Court to thwart the law. On a related front, CLEAN's pro bono lawyers Eugster and Sundberg challenged the cities of Seattle and Spokane over dubious taxpayer funding for private garages.

CLEAN's most notable achievement in forcing government accountability may be its aggressive monitoring of election practices in Pierce County. In 1996, the group won a cease-and-desist order from the state Supreme Court that stopped Pierce County from counting absentee ballots more than a week before election day. CLEAN showed that the Pierce County Auditor's office - run by Cathy Pearsall-Stipek - was breaking the security envelopes, removing the ballot and re-marking ballots.

Last year, an investigative report by KING-TV, which was prompted by CLEAN, found that Pearsall-Stipek's office had apparently rigged ballot positions for local incumbents. The positions are supposed to be drawn randomly. But of 11 races, including her own, Pearsall-Stipek drew the incumbent's name for the top ballot position 11 times. The auditor dismissed this as "an amazing coincidence." KING-TV noted that the chances of this result were 12,000 to 1 and concluded that the auditor had used marked cards in drawing the positions.

CLEAN's success in exposing Pierce County's election shenanigans has exposed its members to financial, legal and physical risks. Last summer, CLEAN was sued by Pierce County government and an individual Pierce County deputy sheriff, Jim Loeffelholz, for defamation and malicious prosecution. CLEAN lawyer Shawn Newman calls the suit a politically motivated SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) to punish the group for publicizing a disturbing election-related incident.

The seeds of the retaliatory suit were planted in late October 1996, when CLEAN members Susan Coffey (a former schoolteacher and Tacoma Parks commissioner) and Bockwinkel discovered an apparently illegal vote-counting warehouse. State law requires the public to have access to facilities where absentee ballots are tallied. When Coffey and Bockwinkel tried to view the vote-counting activity, Loeffelholz ordered a 300-pound county election worker, Billy Joe Arends, to eject the women.

Bockwinkel, a former newspaper photojournalist and editor, captured Arends' assault of Coffey on film. (The clear and graphic pictures can be viewed on the CLEAN Web site at http://www.clean.org/photos/photo1.html .) In one photo, Arends is choking the petite Coffey in a parking lot; her body is rammed against a pick-up truck. A federal jury agreed with Coffey's complaint of excessive force by Arends, but U.S. District Court Judge Jack Tanner dismissed the suit and declined to award damages.

That case is on appeal in the 9th Circuit. In the meantime, Loeffelholz and Pierce County teamed up against CLEAN (which was not a party in the original federal lawsuit) for publishing a scathing opinion piece about the incident written by Coffey's husband, Tom Richeson. In an effort to prove that CLEAN has waged a "campaign of malicious harassment," the county is demanding that CLEAN disclose the names, addresses and telephone numbers of all current and past members of the watchdog group; correspondence, e-mails, and information about the construction and maintenance of CLEAN's Web site; and a list of all persons who receive e-mail, regular mail, or any other correspondence from CLEAN or its Web site.

This legal maneuver smacks of government bullying by a county with deep pockets and obvious incentives to encroach on CLEAN members' freedom of speech, association and privacy rights.

This week, CLEAN is scheduled to go to court to argue against the county's motion and to move the case to a neutral venue in Thurston County. Any fair-minded jurist will take one whiff of Pierce County's attempt to slap down dissident citizen watchdogs and come to one conclusion: It stinks.

Michelle Malkin's column appears Tuesday on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is: [email protected].

Copyright � 1999 Seattle Times Company