Fire District agrees to settle lawsuit

The Skagit County Fire District 13 Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to accept a mutually agreed settlement to end a lawsuit filed by this newspaper over violations of the state’s open government laws.

In the $24,500 settlement, the district does not admit liability concerning the newspaper’s allegations that its office staff withheld public records and that commissioners held illegal meetings last year.

After a closed session with the district’s lawyers and insurance risk manager, the commission signed an agreement to provide complete agenda packets to the newspaper and to the public for every meeting, make draft meeting minutes available within five days after each meeting and turn over all public documents that this newspaper requested and were withheld.

Most importantly, the district agreed to make sure its office staff and elected officials receive comprehensive training on the state’s public records and open meeting laws to avoid such lawsuits in the future. We have insisted that such training be done within 90 days of being elected, appointed or hired and be conducted by the Attorney General’s Office, the Washington Coalition for Open Government, which provide free training, or Municipal Research and Services Center.

The newspaper has not yet signed the agreement, but we expect to sign within the next day or two when our attorney, Michele Earl-Hubbard of Allied Law Group in Seattle, gives the green light.

Within two weeks of the documents being signed, the district must deposit $24,500 with Allied Law Group’s trust account. The bulk of the money will go to pay attorney and court costs.

In our initial settlement offer, which was presented to the district immediately after the lawsuit was filed on March 6, we let the district know that the newspaper expects to end up with $3,750 after the lawyer bills are paid.

And we told the district what we will do with the money: We’ll donate $1,000 to La Conner Boys & Girls Club; $500 to the new La Conner library building fund; $500 to the town’s fund to develop the new waterfront park, $500 to the La Conner volunteer firefighters and $500 to the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association Founda-tion to train new reporters. We’ll keep $750 to help cover our wasted reporter time and other expenses this saga has cost us.

Although the donations are not mentioned in the final settlement agreement, we consider keeping our promises to be every bit as important as keeping our government agencies honest.