DAYTON, Wash. — A measure to dissolve the Columbia County Rural Library District in Washington will not appear on the November ballot.

Columbia County Superior Court Commissioner Julie Karl ruled to block the initiative from the ballot during a hearing at the Columbia County Superior Court in Dayton on Wednesday, Sept. 20.

Neighbors United for Progress, a local political action committee, filed a complaint alleging that the measure to dissolve the county’s library district conflicts with federal and state constitutions and disenfranchises city voters and that the effort to get it on the ballot was invalid and wrought with fraud.

Karl agreed, finding the state statute outlining the dissolution process for rural library districts such as Columbia County’s was unconstitutional and inconsistent as applied.

“It doesn’t make sense to have people that live in the county be the only ones that vote on something that so much affects the citizens of the city,” Karl said at the hearing. “We did away with taxation without representation a long time ago.”

Karl also said the petition process was invalid and there is good cause to believe signature gathering for the petition was fraudulent.

“It is telling that in the initial petition presented, two-thirds of the signatures were invalid,” she said.

Karl’s decision — shared with a full courtroom Wednesday, Sept. 20 — prevents the Columbia County auditor and elections officials, defendants in the case, from putting the issue on the general election ballot when it is printed this week.

She said county election officials followed the procedures outlined in state law as they needed to and asked the state Office of the Attorney General for input.

Karl said she was cognizant of the impact of her decision in the city, county and state.

“If this were to pass, the city and county would lose a vital resource that would disproportionately affect the poorest members of our community,” she said.

Dayton Memorial Library is a meeting place, a warming and cooling center and the only place to use a computer, fax machine or printer for free, she said.

“This would be an irreparable loss to this community,” Karl said.

Earlier this month, Karl issued a temporary order preventing Columbia County and elections officials from placing the measure on the Nov. 7 ballot.

She said at the hearing Sept. 20 that she would file an order with findings of fact and conclusions of law in coming days.

Reaction

Elise Severe, chair of Neighbors United for Progress and an individual plaintiff in the case, said the decision meant she could take a deep breath.

“I am just so thrilled that justice prevailed. It was understood that this is taxation without representation,” Severe said. “I am so proud of the team of people that I work with trying to push our county forward.”

Her attorney, Ric Jacobs, said the outcome was the logical one.

“That library is such a special place for this county,” Jacobs said. “You see with the turnout, (there’s) so much pride for it, that it would have been a shame to even risk it by putting the proposition on the ballot.”

Jacobs said he was proud of Severe and Gerald Kaiser, plaintiff and Neighbors United for Progress member, for getting the ball rolling on an issue that was so important to the community.

“It took just a few people that were brave enough to stand up and do something, and then we saw that the dam really broke and people started coming forward,” he said.

Unopposed

Jacobs’ arguments — including the effort to dissolve the library was effectively a book ban in the community — went unopposed in the courtroom.

Before hearing from Jacobs and Dale Slack, who represented the county, Karl approved an order dismissing Jessica Ruffcorn, a Dayton resident who sponsored the ballot measure, from the case.

Ruffcorn’s attorney, Pete Serrano with the Pasco-based Silent Majority Foundation, had requested Ruffcorn be dismissed, saying she was exercising her constitutional right to petition the government.

“The basis for seeking my removal was that, with the allegations of fraud, there was potential liability against me; while I denounce such allegations, and they do not have merit, my legal counsel and I believed that the best course of action for me was to have me removed,” Ruffcorn said in a statement emailed to the Union-Bulletin on Wednesday. “The downside of that removal was that I was also not able to argue for the ballot measure or against NUP’s allegations.”

Jacobs said agreeing to dismiss Ruffcorn was a tactical decision so she would not have standing to speak at the hearing — “So we would remain unopposed,” he said.

In her statement, Ruffcorn said she disagreed with Karl’s decision and reading of the law.

“In taking the NUP’s pleadings at face value and ruling against the ballot measure, I believe that she took the only voice of unincorporated voters away and displaced them for other voters and nonvoters,” Ruffcorn said.

She said she plans to continue her fight to hold the rural library district accountable. She started the petition effort after the library’s board decided to keep several books addressing gender identity, sexual identity and anti-racism, and she disagrees with the library’s collection policies and budget.

“We didn’t work this hard for change to let it end here like this,” she said. “We must continue to represent our beliefs, and we must remember that we have a voice and that our elected officials need to support that voice.”

County

Slack said at the hearing his role was to make clear the county’s part in the case.

The county has no authority or standing to defend the state statute, he said. That is up to the court.

“It would be improper for the county to either keep this initiative off the ballot or to defend it before the court because we do not have the authority to do so,” he said at the hearing.

County defendants Auditor Will Hutchens and elections supervisor Cathy Abel followed the statute as required, Slack said.

In an interview after the hearing, Slack said the measure to dissolve the library was questionable because it seemed to leave out voters in the city.

“It’s elementary election law that when somebody pays taxes and gets a benefit for those taxes, they have to be able to vote on anything to do with what they’re paying taxes for,” he said.

Though the question was there, the county didn’t have the authority to answer it or act on it, beyond asking the Attorney General’s office to weigh in, Slack said.

Karl’s decision Wednesday was the answer, he said. The ballots will go to print this week without the measure to dissolve the library.