Spokane’s mayor just named a new city attorney, but the City Council president wants to change who makes the pick | Local News | Spokane | The Pacific Northwest Inlander

A couple of months ago, Lynden Smithson, a Spokane municipal prosecutor for about two decades, says he got a call from the mayor. Smithson knew City Attorney Mike Orsmby was planning to step down from his position this summer. What he didn’t expect was that Mayor Nadine Woodward had him in mind as Ormsby’s replacement when Ormsby left the role in June.

“It was a complete surprise,” Smithson says. “I had no grand designs; I was not jockeying for the position.”

Being asked to take on such an important position was incredibly flattering, he says. But while he happily took the job, he doesn’t necessarily expect the City Council to confirm him for the position.

“I don’t know that they have any intention to the point of confirming anybody as city attorney,” Smithson says. “That’s kind of why the ‘interim’ is on my name.”

Indeed, City Council President Breean Beggs, who says he thought until recently that Ormsby was going to stay through the end of the year, tells the Inlander he’s planning to resurrect an idea he’s been floating for a long time.

“It’s something that I have been aware of before I joined City Council,” Beggs says. “The city attorney serves at the pleasure of the mayor. They’re in an awkward position. They can be fired at any time.”

Beggs argues that, while the city attorney is supposed to be representing the interests of the public, the mayor’s hiring and firing power makes the attorney more beholden to a mayor’s agenda.

The ballot measure he’s considering putting before the voters, however, would not only provide the city attorney with more job security — giving a seven-year term to the post — it would shift control over hiring the role away from the mayor and into the hands of the City Council.

“I’ve been thinking this would be a really big improvement for government,” Beggs says.

The change would also mark a limitation on the power of the mayor in Spokane; citizens chose to give mayors more power more than two decades ago, when voters switched the city to a “strong mayor” form of government in 2000.

Municipal Court Administrator Howard Delaney knows how challenging the city attorney job can be. When he was city attorney for former Mayor Mary Verner a decade ago, he describes getting phone calls at 3 am from police officers facing a complicated and immediate choice with considerable legal consequences.

“You’ve got to make an instant call — you might have a minute or so to talk to your subordinates,” says Delaney. “To get the good advice and give it in a split second is tough.”

The wrong call can cost the taxpayers millions in lawsuits. In the past, city attorneys, for example, have come under fire for how they handled public records in the River Park Square and Police Chief Frank Straub controversies.

City attorneys also give legal advice on the ramifications of court cases like Martin v. Boise — a precedent that says that homeless people generally can’t be kicked off public property unless there are enough shelters available. Sometimes the kind of guidance they give can clash with the political goals of an administration.

You don’t have to speculate on whether Ormsby was willing to push back against the Woodward administration behind the scenes: City Administrator Johnnie Perkins said as much at a June 6 council meeting.

“A couple times, I got out ahead of myself and he comes into my office and says, ‘Johnnie, you probably need to tack differently or take another approach. We always want to make sure we’re implementing the council’s policy within the legal framework,'” Perkins said in a speech before council, also calling Ormbsy the best municipal attorney in the entire country.

But Delaney, like Beggs, believes that the role needs extra protections. Asked whether, while serving as city attorney, he thought much about the fact that the mayor could fire him, Delaney says, “I not only thought about it, I experienced it.”

City attorneys also give legal advice on the ramifications of court cases like Martin v. Boise — a precedent that says that homeless people generally can’t be kicked off public property unless there are enough shelters available.

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The city attorney’s office came under fire during Delaney’s tenure in part because of the Otto Zehm scandal, when a developmentally disabled janitor died after being beaten by a Spokane Police officer. During the 2011 campaign, mayoral candidate David Condon promised to fire Deputy City Attorney Rocky Treppiedi, who had been criticized by the Justice Department for the aggressive tactics he used defending the police after the incident. Shortly into his first term, Condon fired Delaney, and the new city attorney fired Treppiedi.

That kind of scenario makes it harder to recruit good attorneys for the position, Delaney argues.

“Why am I going to fold up my law practice when it may only be 24 months or 36 months — and then, because a new mayor comes in, you’re gone?” Delaney asks.

By giving city attorneys guaranteed seven-year terms, Beggs says it would give them enough time to qualify for city pensions. And it would make them much more difficult to fire.

“To terminate for cause, both the mayor and the council would have to agree,” Beggs says.

While the mayor would be consulted as part of the hiring process, Beggs’ proposal would have the City Council, the group he leads, get the final say over who gets picked. (Any mayor, within their own budget, would still be able to hire an attorney for advice on their policy priorities.)

“My thinking is that it would be seven appointing instead of one,” Beggs says.

But Delaney worries under that policy the council could think that the city attorney was their personal attorney, in the same way mayors can now. Smithson argues the mayor picking the attorney makes more sense.

“The departments I advise on the day-to-day operations are all appointed by the mayor. They’re all hired and fired by the mayor,” Smithson says. “These department heads answer to the mayor and not the City Council.”

No matter who hires him, he’ll have to keep confidences and represent multiple groups that are sometimes fighting with each other.

“It puts me in a weird situation, but it is what it is,” Smithson says.

But there’s another way that who picks the attorney matters. Woodward is a conservative, while the City Council has a majority of progressives. While Ormsby’s brother, Timm Ormsby, is a longtime Democratic state representative in the area, Smithson’s sister-in-law, meanwhile, held a Loren Culp for Governor campaign fundraiser at her house. Though Smithson says he did not think Culp “was a viable candidate,” he describes himself as “definitely a Republican.”

“But I’m pretty middle of the road,” he says. “Fiscally conservative, but definitely socially more liberal.”

Woodward, for example, has complained that the city’s Community Court, an evidence-backed program that connects low-level offenders with services instead of jail time, was a “revolving door” that was too soft on criminals.

Already, Smithson says, he’s talked with city prosecutors about adding a little more stick to the bushel of carrots offered by Community Court — assigning offenders to work crews or community service if they aren’t willing to get treatment.

“No one should go to jail for a long time, but at the same time, let’s not have them continue to commit these crimes,” he says.

At the same time, Smithson adds, “I do not want to be in the policymaking business. I’m in the advising business. I will give the best advice to the mayor and City Council that I can come up with.”

Of course, that’s only if the mayor and the City Council continue to let him. ♦