OAKVILLE — A reporter with The Centralia Chronicle was barred from covering a morning workshop of the Chehalis Basin Flood Authority Thursday by an official with the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis. The Flood Authority is governed by the rules of the state Open Public Meetings Act and its meetings are normally open.
The workshop was being conducted inside the community building on the Chehalis Tribe’s reservation with every member of the multi-jurisdiction Flood Authority present and a few of the alternate members.
Flood Authority Chair Vickie Raines said that the Chehalis Tribe decided to close the morning session, which was geared as a government-to-government training session hosted by the Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs. Raines aknowledged a quorum was present at the workshop, but said no decisions were made and the tribe decided to close the meeting to anyone not directly affiliated with the Flood Authority. Raines said she supported the decision.
The Flood Authority consists of Aberdeen, Montesano, Chehalis, Centralia, Oakville, Pe Ell, Grays Harbor and Lewis and Thurston counties, although officials from incoming members Napavine and Cosmopolis were also present.
“At one point, even the tribe left the meeting so that we could have an open and honest conversation with the independent consultant and ask questions that members of the Flood Authority may not have felt comfortable asking with members of the public present,” Raines said after the meeting.
Raines said she felt that the state’s open public meeting laws may not be a factor while on reservation land, but noted it was all out of her control.
“I agree with the decision to close the meeting,” Raines added. “This was done on their land, in their building.”
Raines noted that the Flood Authority paid several hundred dollars to receive the government-to-government training and the class only had limited space. She noted that there was still room in the class when a tribal official asked a reporter with The Chronicle to leave.
David Burnett, Chairman of the Chehalis Tribe, did not return a message seeking comment on Thursday.
The morning session lasted six hours. The meeting was opened up again to the public for the afternoon. The Daily World attended the afternoon session, but never planned on attending the morning session. The Chronicle was allowed re-entry into the afternoon session.
“I was thinking about the question of allowing reporters or not and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an article tomorrow that says ‘Flood Authority excludes paper’ and that would be accurate,” attorney J. Vander Stoep, who represents Pe Ell on the Flood Authority, said during the afternoon meeting. “ Except the other side of the coin is you’re not on public property here, you’re on private property and we listened to a seminar for six hours. We got to ask questions. But basically it was like a college class and there wasn’t anything remotely that this group talked about that was a decision. We were being trained in how the tribe generally looks at the world and the appropriate ways to interact and the inappropriate ways to interact.”
STATEMENT FROM CHRONICLE
Brian Mittge, editor-in-chief of The Chronicle in Centralia, issued this statement after one of his newspaper reporters was blocked from Thursday morning’s meeting of the Flood Authority:
The Chronicle has been covering flooding on the Chehalis River for more than a century, and we were continuing that coverage on Thursday when a representative of the Chehalis Tribe would not let one of our reporters into a public meeting of the taxpayer-funded Flood Authority.
For the Flood Authority to hold a meeting without letting the press, on behalf of our tens of thousands of readers, attend is completely unacceptable and clearly illegal.
A public body cannot exclude the public from its meetings by holding a meeting on private property or reservation land.
If that’s the case, expect the county commission or city council to start holding their meetings on the nearest reservation or in a locked building across the street from City Hall.
Thursday’s “training” was a public meeting, according to RCW 42.30.020, which lists “deliberations,” “discussions” and “considerations” and any other “transaction of the official business of a public agency” as subject to the state Open Public Meetings Act.
“The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them,” our state law declares. “The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”
The Flood Authority might like to avoid scrutiny, but the “frank discussions” they want to have in secret must be open to all citizens. That’s the law, but it’s also what’s best for an informed public discussion of the vital issue of Chehalis River flooding.
