Councilmen try to restrict Mayor's right to break ties

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder.

But if so, a La Conner Town Council member on extended vacation has yet to feel the love from two of his colleagues.

For the second straight summer, arrows have been flung — and not from Cupid’s quiver — at council member Jacques Brunisholz.

The retired La Conner High School teacher has been chided by fellow council members Dan O’Donnell and John Leaver for his meeting absences, last year to fulfill a longtime goal of trekking the Pacific Crest Trail and now to visit family and friends in Europe.

State law allows a town to vacate an elective office if the public official in question has missed three consecutive meetings without being excused by the council.

Brunisholz has not had to vacate his council seat because most of his absences have been excused, often with Mayor Ramon Hayes casting a tie-breaking vote in his favor.

Which is where last week’s session provided some pre-July Fourth fireworks, exposing short fuses all around as debate roiled over who specifically comprises the council.

With council member MaryLee Chamberlain, in addition to Brunisholz, not in attendance, O’Donnell and Leaver comprised the council majority and voted 2-1 to amend the town code in order to deny Hayes the tie-breaker on motions related to meeting attendance.

Councilman Bill Stokes cast the dissent.

It was a bold — some said brash — move on the part of O’Donnell and Leaver. It went counter to advice received earlier from Town Attorney Brad Furlong and attorney Patrick Mason of Municipal Research & Services Center.

“Short answer,” Furlong had texted in response to a written query by Hayes, “you can break the tie on a vote to excuse.”

Mason concurred that state law gives the mayor the right to break all ties.

“Our opinion on this issue,” Mason said, “is that where the state statute sets out the tie-breaking vote authority of the Mayor such as provided in the Revised Code of Washington (35.27.280), then that cannot be limited or restricted by an action or rule adopted by the Town Council.”

“I submit,” said O’Donnell, “that the council is separate from the mayor in this regard.”

Leaver was even more blunt.

“We need some way out of it,” he said of a seasonally short-handed council. “At least two of us are pretty frustrated by it.

“I don’t think a council member should take two months off,” he added. “There’s a responsibility to be here.”

Stokes was equally vocal in opposition to stripping the mayor of tie-breaking duties.

“Just because you don’t get your way,” Stokes said, “you don’t change things.

“This,” he insisted, “is an absolutely illegal thing to do. You can’t discern what matters the mayor can break ties on.”

Hayes, for his part, chose not to unleash a view one way or the other except to predict that town attorney Furlong will soon be hounded for further review.

“I don’t have a dog in the fight,” Hayes explained.