Potential legal tab in Shoreline council lawsuit "ridiculous"

A lawsuit accusing four current and former Shoreline City Council members of holding illegal secret meetings two years ago to oust the city manager and decide on his replacement could mean a few hundred dollars in fines for the politicians if they lose.

But for Shoreline taxpayers, the case already has packed a much bigger wallop.

The city is on the hook for more than $340,000 to a private law firm for defending the council members. A second law firm was hired for $7,500 to advise the council on whether to keep paying for the council members' lawyers. And the city itself was recently added to the lawsuit as a defendant, forcing it to hire a third set of lawyers.

If the city loses the case, it also could wind up paying the plaintiffs' legal costs, which already top $250,000.

"Ridiculous," Councilman Ron Hansen said of the mounting legal expenses — a sentiment that both sides seem to share.

The civil suit against council members Maggie Fimia, Robert Ransom, Janet Way and former member John Chang accuses the four, which constitutes a majority, of holding secret meetings in 2005 to force the resignation of then-City Manager Steve Burkett.

The council members deny wrongdoing and say the lawsuit amounts to harassment by disgruntled political opponents.

The case was filed by former council members Constance King and Kevin Grossman and local attorney John Hollinrake Jr. Grossman lost his council seat to Fimia in 2003; Hollinrake and King are longtime critics of the accused council members.

Recent mediation talks failed to produce a settlement. Both sides are digging in for a trial and blaming their adversaries for the mounting legal bills.

The lawsuit has become a major election-year issue for this city of 53,000, a suburb immediately north of Seattle that incorporated in 1995. Fimia and Ransom are up for re-election and have been slammed over the lawsuit in political ads.

The dispute wasn't supposed to be so expensive. In court papers, the plaintiffs originally said they wanted to make sure "the citizens of Shoreline are not penalized" for the alleged council actions.

But after the local lawyer who filed the case moved to Eastern Washington, the plaintiffs hired new attorneys who dropped the language about protecting taxpayers and added the city of Shoreline as a defendant. State law says attorneys' fees in such cases can be recovered only from governments.

"It is a divisive lawsuit," said Steve DiJulio, the attorney for the accused council members. "Where it was a personal attack on the defendants, it's now an attack on the city itself."

But critics say the council members have only themselves to blame. The case, they say, could have been settled earlier for a small fine and an apology.

"You can point fingers in any direction that you want, but my opinion is the defendant council members have had the ability to settle this if they wanted to," said Hansen, who had supported keeping Burkett as city manager.

The City Council last week voted to keep paying the legal bills for the accused members and former member Chang. The accused council members were not allowed to vote on the matter.

"We have to provide this defense. We're in a contractual box," Hansen said.

The case centers on whether a series of meetings, e-mails and phone calls among the four council members in December 2005 amounted to an illegal action under the state's Open Public Meetings Act.

The law says city councils, school boards and other local legislative bodies must debate and make their decisions in public, although closed, executive sessions are common for discussing personnel matters. But under the law, a majority of council members cannot get together and hash out decisions in secret and then trot them out for a rehearsed formal vote in public.

The lawsuit against Fimia and the other Shoreline council members contends they did exactly that — conspiring in a series of private conversations before a Dec. 12, 2005, council meeting to force Burkett's resignation in exchange for a $140,000 severance package.

Burkett's ouster came after a contentious November election shifted the balance of power to a majority critical of Burkett and a city-sponsored redevelopment of Aurora Avenue North.

The lawsuit points to a Dec. 9 letter signed by the four council members to an attorney, saying they wanted to terminate Burkett's contract and were seeking legal advice. The plaintiffs also point to dozens of e-mails and phone calls among the council members.

The lawuit also accuses the council members of deciding on Burkett's replacement in secret.

Ransom announced at a Dec. 15 Christmas party, according to the plaintiffs, that a majority of the council had "made a decision" to hire Robert Olander, the deputy city manager, to replace Burkett. The council later voted to hire Olander, who has remained in the post.

"None of them seem to see the public-confidence problem they were creating here. Why do you feel you need to go behind everybody's back and stage this coup?" said Michele Earl Hubbard, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

Fimia says there were conversations among the council members before the Dec. 12 meeting, but they were always careful to avoid gathering as a group of four. That would have been a quorum of the seven-member council and a violation of the open-meeting law.

Tim Ford, open-government ombudsman for Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna, agreed that council members can hold some private discussions as long as they do not gather as a majority.

But Ford noted that council members are not automatically safe if they gather in smaller groups. Courts have ruled that a series of such discussions, including via e-mail, can amount to an illegal decision if a majority participates and arrives at some kind of collective decision.

Fimia, who formerly served on the King County Council, said council members have to be allowed to prepare for meetings and hold some discussions about pending issues. Otherwise they could never get anything done, she said.

Asked whether she could have handled the Burkett situation better, Fimia said she believes her political opponents would have tried to block and harass her no matter how the action was carried out.

"I don't know what would have happened, but it might not have been any better," Fimia said.

The case likely won't be decided before the Nov. 6 election. Lawyers for the city, which was only recently added to the lawsuit, are expected to request that the trial be delayed until early next year to give them time to prepare.

Jim Brunner: 206-515-5628 or jbrunner@seattletimes.com