AG's office backs firing of Renton college president

Last week's vote by Renton Technical College trustees to fire college president Don Bressler is valid, despite the fact that one of the trustees who voted does not live within the college district and should never have been appointed to the board.

That's the opinion of Dave Stolier, chief of the education division at the state Attorney General's Office. And Bressler said Thursday he accepts the opinion and would finish clearing out his office by the end of the day.

Many in the Renton community were taken by surprise last week when trustees voted 3-1 to fire Bressler after a series of closed-door meetings. The trustees, citing confidentiality rules, have not publicly stated why they took that action.

After the vote, Bressler's supporters began doing some digging and discovered that trustee Frank Irigon lives outside the district. Irigon, who said he lives close to the college and always assumed he was within the boundaries, was appointed in 2002 by then-Gov. Gary Locke and later reappointed by Gov. Chris Gregoire.

The revelation that Irigon was improperly appointed, which came as an embarrassment to the governor's office, has sparked a full-scale review of all 150 community-college trustees in the state of Washington.

Chris Reykdal, the deputy executive director of finance at the state Board for Community and Technical Colleges, said Thursday the review of the trustees' addresses is almost complete with no further anomalies found. He said the board and governor's office are beefing up their systems for vetting future board candidates.

Stolier said case law both within Washington and across the country favors allowing votes taken in good faith to stand, even when a procedural glitch is discovered later.

"Actually, once you find it, there's a pretty well-settled body of law that governs this issue," Stolier said. "It's about making sure that citizens can rely on the stability of government and government decisions."

Stolier said the rules are to prevent the havoc that could ensue if officials — including judges — were subject to having years' worth of decisions challenged.

Nick Perry: 206-515-5639 or nperry@seattletimes.com