28 candidates, 28 interviews

The Yakima City Council forged a framework Tuesday night for replacing outgoing Councilman Norm Johnson.

The 28 applicants for the job will come before the council over two as-yet-undetermined days and pitch their candidacy for three minutes. The council will then choose up to 10 finalists to bring back for more-extensive interviews. The entire process will be done publicly, as mandated by state open meetings law.

It is a compromise plan that broke a 3-3 deadlock between council members who wanted to hear from all 28 applicants and those who wanted to winnow the field to finalists for more in-depth interviews.

"I think you all recognize that we are tied 3-3," Mayor Dave Edler said before the impasse was broken. "We could, I suppose, arm-wrestle (to break the tie)."

Such tie votes lay bare the need to replace Johnson, who is leaving for the state Legislature, and give some indication of how influential his replacement could be. The six council members who will pick Johnson's replacement tend to break down into two three-member blocs.

That was apparent Monday when Johnson left a budget session early to interview potential legislative aides in Olympia. Councilmen Micah Cawley, Bill Lover and Rick Ensey voted in favor of proposals to freeze city hiring and to eliminate some vacant city positions. The other three council members, Kathy Coffey, Neil McClure and Edler, voted against the measures. Without Johnson to cast the deciding vote, both measures deadlocked 3-3 and therefore failed.

The sides were the same on Tuesday.

Edler, Coffey and McClure argued the council should interview only finalists, while Cawley, Lover and Ensey pushed for hearing from all the candidates. The discussion was complicated by the sheer number of applicants. No fewer than 29 people applied for the rare midterm vacancy, created by Johnson's planned resignation.

Even though one of them, David Smith, was disqualified because he lives outside Yakima's city limits, the time it would take to interview the remaining 28 was an issue.

"I don't care if it takes three days," Cawley said.

Coffey argued that the council wouldn't have time to interview with much depth if it interviewed all 28 candidates.

"Are we interested in what they look like? Is that what it is?" she asked incredulously.

Near 10 p.m., McClure broke the tie by agreeing to a compromise plan suggested by Lover -- that there be a short statement from each followed by more extensive interviews.

This was all done in an open, public session, contrary to what council members expected as recently as last week.

The council is precluded by open-meetings laws from winnowing the field of applicants in closed session. An exemption from those laws is provided so the council can evaluate applicants behind closed doors. But that exemption is narrowly drawn, Senior Assistant City Attorney Helen Harvey explained to the council on Tuesday.

"Narrowing the pool of applicants in executive session is beyond the scope of the executive session exemption for evaluating applicants," she said.

Though Johnson is still on the council until Dec. 29, he was not at Tuesday's meeting because he was in Olympia preparing for next year's legislative session. He will not participate in choosing his replacement.

Last month, Johnson beat Democrat Vickie Ybarra for the right to replace retiring veteran 14th District state lawmaker Mary Skinner, R-Yakima.

* Pat Muir can be reached at 577-7693, or at pmuir@yakimaherald.com.

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