By Steve Werhly

The San Juan County Charter Review Commission has decided to roll back the clock – to the days when the county’s top elected officials were known as the board of county commissioners.

And to the days when three – not six – elected officials held the reins of county government, and worked full time.

“We know there is opposition,” said Maureen See, vice-chairwoman of the CRC. “But the testimony before the commission has been overwhelmingly in favor of a three-person council.”

In addition, the commission intends to recommend a return to countywide elections, in which candidates from three council districts would be elected by all the voters in the county.

“The original home rule charter had a three-member council, which I supported and voted for,” CRC Chairman Gordy Petersen said of Proposition 1, which created the basic Home Rule Charter and was approved in 2005 by nearly 63 percent of voters. “But I didn’t support the six-person small-district amendment.”

That amendment to the “basic” charter, known as Proposition 2, passed with 55 percent of ballots cast in the same election.

Under the commission-proposed charter amendment, voters county-wide would elect a non-partisan county council from three districts, whose boundaries would correspond roughly to the three legislative districts which divided the county before Proposition 2 went into effect. Each council member would be a resident of their respective districts.

In support of a return to a three-person legislative body, which would also manage the county’s day-to-day operations, Petersen argues that the six-person council is skirting the state’s Open Public Meetings Act by relying on three-person subcommittees to do the legwork on legislation that is later voted on by the full council.

“These subcommittees violate the spirit of the public meetings act, and probably the letter of the law as well, because they recommend action to the full council” he said. “Whatever our government does must be open to public scrutiny.”

Petersen, a former freeholder, the group that created the planks of the home rule charter, adds, “The six-person council was an experiment that didn’t work in 2005, so we should admit it was a bad idea and correct it. We need transparency and accountability from the council, and we’re seeing neither.”

Instead, what CRC members are seeing, according to Petersen and See, is a county government with declining morale, less efficiency, ineffective decision-making and increased spending. Islanders are paying more for less service under the charter than they did under the local government’s previous structure, Petersen said.

“San Juan County has increased spending substantially over the last five years,” he said.

The CRC’s recommendations, if approved by voters in November, would usher in a return to three full-time elected officials with more authority to manage county government. They would have both executive and legislative responsibilities, delegating authority to a county administrator, whose position would also be reconstituted and renamed as a “county manager,” who would then manage the county’s various departments at the direction of the council.

“The manager’s authority would be delegated by the council, and not as it is now by the charter, making the council politically responsible for the manager’s actions or failure to act,” Petersen said.

The commission met Saturday on Orcas Island to finishing touches on its list of recommendations, which will be submitted to the prosecuting attorney for a legal review. Following a two-week hiatus, the CRC will meet again to review and possibly rethink or reword its recommendations based on input from the prosecutor.

In the meantime, the commission is developing an “outreach plan” to educate and inform voters about its proposed charter amendments.

“If voters are completely informed, the entire commission with one or two exceptions is confident these amendments will be approved,” See said.