12/21/2006: "County Council Travel Money"

A small part of the County Budget is a travel allocation for each member of the Council. It is intended to help offset expenses occurred when Council members are required to travel on County business, such as mandatory meetings, legal proceeding, planning issues, and occasionally to Olympia for legislative matters.

Councilman Ranker has prided himself on how much time he spends in Olympia, and has in the past suggested that "Council travel money be put into a pot", as opposed to a set amount allocated to each councilman. The idea of a pot of money from which travel expenses would be paid would solve the problem of a Councilman having to ask for additional money, which is what happened when Ranker, in his words: "burned through" his travel budget more than once.

When Ranker had previously requested more money to cover his trips, Lichter and Myhr had finally consented to it, but only as a one-time grant. Myhr had also asked Ranker to report back to the Council on what he had accomplished by making his frequent trips, and suggested he might submit a one page report to the Council, but Ranker had refused, saying he did not have time, and it was inappropriate for an elected official to have to submit a report to the other council members, but that he was attaching agendas to his vouchers to show where he had been, and what the topics were.

At a staff meeting of the Council on Monday, Ranker asked the now full six member Council to consider his request for one source of money that individual members could draw from. Gene Knapp said he was more that happy to let someone else go to Olympia on County business. At that point Chairman Lichter gave the new council members the history of the Ranker requests, and he and Myhr's responses to it.

The question of "how much are we talking about here" was asked, and it was explained the travel budget for each County Commissioner had been over $2,300.00 a year -an amount that only Ranker had exceeded.

Howie Rosenfeld stated that "You guys want to draw a line in the sand, but I don't sweat the small stuff".

Councilman Peterson told Ranker that he did not wish to offend him, but that he had heard concerns expressed "on the street" if Ranker was "effective for Kevin, or for the County" when he makes his trips to Olympia. This resulted in an immediate explosive four letter expletive from Ranker, who loudly and heatedly said "My work is very effective down there"!

That ended the discussion items for that staff meeting, but it may not have ended the discussion.