Olympia Bulletin

(Olympia, WA) – The recent Olympia City Council Email Scandal has made its way into the Oregon press:

OLYMPIA — The mayor has asked fellow councilors to stop passing notes — electronically, that is — during council meetings. Especially if they’re discussing public business. That’s contrary to Washington’s public meetings law, according to the attorney general’s office.

Councilmember Jeff Kingsbury’s behind the scenes utterances of “idiot” and “coward” when referring to the Olympia electorate has elicited a strong backlash on the local and regional level.

Councilmember Rhenda Strub reacted to public scrutiny by attacking a local Open Government advocate.

In Olympia, questions remain about the apparent breakdown of control internally within the Doug Mah led City Council, which is still under scrutiny over recent controversial dealings with real estate developers.

Some Olympia residents feel that given the apparent indifference to the gross behavior displayed by the Olympia City Councilmembers themselves is evidence of a vacuum of leadership from the very top of the Council. This would ultimately place the responsibility squarely at the feet of Olympia’s mayor, Doug Mah.

The controversy started when local citizen journalists recently uncovered that secret emails were being exchanged concurrently during official public testimony by the following Olympia City Council members: Jeff Kingsbury, Joe Hyer, Joan Machlis, Rhenda Strub, Karen Messmer  and Craig Ottavelli.

This secret email correspondence was determined by the Washington State Attorney General’s Office to be in violation of the state’s Open Public Meetings Act.

While confronted with the Washington State Attorney General Office ’s determination of potentially illegal behavior being carried out on the part of the Olympia City Council, Doug Mah has failed to address the issue of city council transparency in a concrete manner.

These are truly sad times here in Olympia, WA..