As readers know, former council member Dan Clawson's frivolous and politically motivated lawsuit was resoundingly tossed out by King County Superior Court in December.

A few weeks ago, the judge ordered that Dan Clawson pay $829.00 plus 12 % interest for the trouble he caused us.

Some may say it should have been more, but at least it is MORE THAN DOUBLE the maximum fine that could have been collected in a legitimate Open Public Meeting Action against four defendants. And in addition to the $829.00, he also has lost his own billable time (he served as his own attorney) and legal out-of-pocket costs.

I think the Honorable Judge has made it clear to Dan Clawson that the Court and the Open Public Meetings Act are in place for serious business, not for abuse and manipulation in political campaigns.

Here is most of the text from the order (the actual documents are shown below):

CASE NO. 07-2-30322-7
Dan Clawson, Plaintiff vs. Randy Corman; Denis Law; Marcie Palmer; and Don Persson

JUDGMENT SUMMARY

Judgment Creditors: Randy Corman; Denis Law; Marcie Palmer; and Don Persson
Judgment Debtor: Dan Clawson
Total Judgment: $829.00
Judgment Interest Rate: 12% per annum


THIS MATTER came before the Honorable Mary Yu on December 12. 2008, on Defendants' motion for Summary Judgement Under the Open Public Meetings Act. On that date, the Court entered an Order Granting Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgement Under the Open Public Meetings Act dismissing the cause of action in its entirety, with prejudice, and provided for entry of a Judgment in the City's favor; now, therefore,

IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the City is granted judgment against Dan Clawson for statutory attorneys' fees in the amount of $200.0, and statutory costs in the amount of $629.00.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the interest on the total judgment amount of $829.00 shall accrue at the rate of 12% per annum from the date of entry of this Judgment.

DONE IN OPEN COURT this 16th day of January, 2009.

Signed, Judge Mary Yu












Note that the Honorable Superior Court Judge in this case was voted Washington State Judge of the Year by the Washington chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates, and is highly respected for her fairness, wisdom, and patience. Read more about Judge Mary Yu here.


(For further background on this case, click on the "dan clawson" tag immediately below)

After more than a year of harassment, false innuendo, defamatory comments, and frivolous legal action from ex-councilman Dan Clawson, his lawsuit against me and my council colleagues has been firmly and completely thrown out by the court.

King County Judge Mary Yu made it very clear in her ruling that she takes the Open Public Meetings Act very seriously, and she would do anything to protect it. She also said she read every word of the sworn statements and supporting materials that Dan Clawson submitted to her. She also looked at Dan's post-it notes he dug out of the trash can. And then for purposes of this Summary Judgment Hearing, the judge made the legal assumption that all of the disputed facts and inferences went in Dan Clawson's direction, as if a jury fully agreed with Dan's version of the facts (which I know they would not if went to trial). Even giving Dan the benefit of all the assumptions, claims, and inferences, King County Judge Mary Yu determined that that the Open Public Meetings Act was NOT violated.

In fact, the judge questioned Dan extensively on how Dan Clawson presumed we council members were supposed to accomplish our normal responsibilities without talking to one another occasionally in our offices, something that Dan tried to present as a violation. "Groups-of-two" he called them, as if there was something sinister about the council president talking to a committee chair.

Along the way, Dan insulted me repeatedly in the media and in court. He harassed me at my office, he wasted time by many city staff, he temporarily froze and overburdened our email and records systems, and he cost the city of Renton a large amount of money.

Latest estimates are that Dan cost the city about $43,000 in legal fees alone. We will be able to recover a small fraction of these costs, around $2000, from Dan as a result of the judge's recent ruling. But the rest is lost funds, unless we find a way to counter-sue him for the waste.

LEGAL DOCUMENTS
Here are the key legal documents:

Here is our request for summary judgement

Here is our rebuttal to Dan's rant that I mentioned in my last blog on this topic

Here is the judges order that throws the case out of court.

But this is not all the news...

DAN'S APPEAL

I was going to give Dan a chance for a new beginning-- I held off in this blog even though this ruling occurred last week. However, word has come today that Dan Clawson (who does his own legal work) has now filed a virtually impossible appeal of the judges ruling that threw his case out. Even if Dan could win such an appeal, it would not win his case for him-- it would only give him a chance go to trial (where the jury would find the facts are against Dan). And Dan can not win this appeal. To do so, he now faces a much higher burden than he did at the last hearing. The appellate court will actually assume all the disputed facts are AGAINST Dan Clawson's position when the court decides whether or not to overturn the Superior Court Judge.

So, Dan may end up costing us another $15,000 or more in legal fees and many hours of staff time just to handle paperwork through this pointless appeals phase.

In the economic climate we are in, we have had to leave dozens of public safety positions unfilled, and eliminate positions of School Resource Police Officers. We have also reduced contributions to many social services, such as King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, RAYS, and other very worthy causes.

With the money Dan Clawson has cost the city, including out-of-pocket legal fees and city staff time, we could have restored one of these public safety positions, enhanced our support of KCSARC and RAYS, restored some funding to another department, or reduced taxes or fees.

Finally, I will point out again that the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA) is an excellent law, that I zealously support and promote, and all of us Washington residents benefit from the transparency it instills into government processes. OPMA is more than a law...it is a philosophy of including the public in ALL stages of government decision making, something that I have always striven for. This philosophy is why I place my email in a citizen retrievable file; why I always steer toward giving more than enough opportunity for public input, and why I started this blog. Ironically, Dan Clawson hatched this lawsuit after a night when I wanted to allow extra public input at a meeting when he wanted to shut it down; and when he sent his lawsuit to the newspapers he mocked me for sharing my email. I was on a committee with Dan in which we were working on email policy. During those deliberations, Dan made it clear that he did not want his council email to be read by the public unless they filled out Freedom of Information forms first, and gave Dan a chance to keep some of his correspondence private. And Dan was the instigator of an email which was sent to three other council members (but not all seven) in an apparent effort to obtain a behind-the-scenes majority prior to a council vote...to date, the most clear violation of OPMA standards that the city has documented. For all these reasons, Dan's failed lawsuit seemed as hypocritical as it does wasteful.

In this appeals chapter, Dan will make his last stand on an issue he has been on the wrong side of from day one. I am thankful that I will no longer be bothered by his daily requests for more records; Dan will be forced by the court to work only with the data he has amassed in the last thirteen months (the record as it stands), he can not harass anybody at city hall for more depositions, affidavits, etc. This will give us a greater ability to forget about Dan while we work on the issues important to the citizens of Renton. Our attorney Mike Kenyon, who has done a professional and diligent job of representing the city's interests, will continue to handle Dan Clawson for us. I wish Dan Clawosn would realize the 2007 election is over, that the courts have looked at his evidence in the most favorable way the could for him and ruled against him, and that he might find the strength to let go of this loss and move on.

At his own court deposition last month, ex-councilman Dan Clawson (who resigned last year) provided his perspective that he feels the Keolker re-election campaign fight was "bitter." He was the only one who said this during the depositions.

(note: for history on this issues click on the "dan clawson" tag at the bottom of this article)

In spite of testimony from five witnesses that did not support Dan Clawson's case in any way, Dan has filed another rambling, misleading, and angry-sounding brief with the court. I thought long and hard about publishing any of it. I really don't want to give Dan the legitimacy or the forum...somewhat like publishing the Unibomber's Manifesto. For this reason I have just published some of his sworn rant about me, and left many of the other pages out. Dan would do himself a favor if he hired himself an attorney, so that he could avoid letting his emotions spill into his court briefs.

( Read more... )

The Kathy Keolker campaign was a gift that just keeps on giving; it continues to cost Renton taxpayer's money, as Keolker supporter (and ex-councilman) Dan Clawson trudges along with his frivolous campaign-related lawsuit.

Fortunately, we are finally getting some sworn testimony, and it is causing Dan's "case" to evaporate quickly.

Dan and Kathy were deposed last week, and Master Builder Representative Garrett Huffman was deposed today.

From these three sworn depositions, it is pretty clear to see where Kathy and Dan went flying off on a tangent into space while the rest of the world kept on spinning.

I'll post the complete depositions when I get the certified copies. But in general terms, Kathy and Dan both testified that their main evidence of wrong-doing was a conversation between Garrett Huffman and City Chief Administrator Jay Covington, in which Mr. Huffman had made a statement about having four votes to delay an ordinance. Dan and Kathy both seemed certain that this proved that in spite of our vehement protests to the contrary, Don Persson and I must have talked to Garrett Huffman or in fact communicated with him somehow through some third party.

Well, today, in his sworn testimony, Mr Huffman stated that he told Jay Covington that he "MAY have four votes to delay the ordinance", and this was predicated on his attempts to contact us (which were not successful). Mr Huffman acknowledged that Don Persson never returned his phone call, and that I never even got my message because it was left on an out-of-date phone number for me. Hence, Garrett had contacted two council members at the most, not the four needed to represent any kind of council quorum. Garrett Huffman admitted he was posturing when he talked to Jay, and then reminded Dan that he is a lobbyist...it's what he does.

Dan now realizes he lied in his lawsuit claims, he lied to the media when he said four of us had a secret meeting with Garrett Huffman, and he lied to the people who elected him. Dan's only excuse is that he was too blind with loyalty to Kathy Keolker to question the normal posturing of an experienced lobbyist, even while four other elected officials, the city's highest paid executive, his own council secretary, and countless others were telling Dan that he was wrong. Bummer for Dan.

I've got all the sworn evidence I would need to file a defamation lawsuit.

Meanwhile, Dan has implied that he is now going to refocus his complaint away from the Master Builders and onto our selection of Toni Nelson as council president in 2007. Even though the seven of us chose Toni unanimously, Dan wants to explore whether more than two council members talked about concerns they had with Toni before she was elected. Legally Dan's theory is even crazier than Dan's Master Builder theory, so I would have no concerns about going down this path... except that it will make some private, long-ago concerns about individual personalities very public for the rest of time. If Dan pursues this, he will lose both legally and morally.

Poor Dan Clawson...he is watching so much slip away right now.

As we seek to prove our defense that the honest members of council were merely reacting in real time to dishonest collusion by Kathy Keolker, Dan Clawson, and others, Dan is now worried that the depositions might be embarrassing to him, Kathy, and campaign chair Margarita Prentice.

In Dan Clawson's most recent letter, he says that he fears that (Randy) might want to "obtain embarrassing information to post on his blog"

What the embarrassing information is Dan would not say, but I am now more curious than ever. This was HIS lawsuit after all. And I would be more than happy for him to post my entire deposition...I have some things I've wanted to share about Dan and Kathy and their friends for some time now, and being under oath will appease my conscience when I share them. :-)

Interestingly, he's also begging my attorney to stop me from sharing so much information with the public. It's funny how Dan Clawson felt great sending his false allegations to the major newspapers even before legally serving them to us, but now that our defense is coming together he wants everything to be hush-hush.

Needless to say, Dan is watching as his case gets flushed away right now, as he struggles with whether to let "his side" be subject to potentially "embarrassing" depositions.


(For background on this case, click the "dan clawson" tag below)

We had another meeting with our attorney on Thursday, to agree on our next steps for trying to relieve the city of ex-councilman Dan Clawson's frivolous lawsuit. We spent time discussing the summary motion to dismiss, and the list of witnesses we intend to depose.

We also discussed the insight we could gain from the Shoreline case, a case that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. And we are intrigued with what we can learn about Dan Clawson's agenda and strategy from his own comments to the Seattle Times about the Shoreline case. ( read more )

Several readers have asked about the lawsuit filed by ex-councilman Dan Clawson, who rooted through trash cans last year, pulled out some innocuous post-it notes , and filed a bogus lawsuit to assist Kathy Keolker's failed reelection campaign. ( Read more... )

Dan Clawson's dirty trick from Kathy Keolker's losing campaign continues to waste resources and generate bad feelings. While it's not worth wasting an extra minute of time thinking about Dan, I still get settlement offers that are contingent on me "admitting" to things that didn't happen.

In one offer, Dan alludes he may waste hundreds of thousands of your taxpayer dollars if I do not agree to "admit" to Dan's fantasy facts, essentially perjuring myself.

While Dan keeps the pressure on me to lie, he creates a sort of "Zombie" out of the embarrassing losing campaign waged by Kathy Keolker, Campaign Manager Raechelle Turner, and Campaign Chair Margarita Prentice...a sort of un-dead campaign that attacks new bystanders instead of resting peacefully in history.

Do we really want to continue to remember Dan's trash-can diving, ugly lawsuits, letters from the police about threats from Mayor Keolker, confrontation in the Piazza, etc?

Dan also seems intent on my repeating over-and-over how I handled concerns about Toni Nelson as Council President in 2007. Dan admits this was probably not an Open Public Meetings Violation, but he seems to find it of value for me to write about it, and make statements about it, as if no one affected has any feelings.

I've told my attorney that I am not going to lie for anyone or anything, least of all to save Dan Clawson from his own humiliating statements and actions. I'm very happy to go to court if necessary... I would look forward to getting Dan, Kathy, and others under oath.

Dan's lawsuit has already helped him lose the confidence of his community, and subsequently his role on city council. He needs to drop his lawsuit now, and leave the past behind, before his lawsuit makes us think of him as a sort of "zombie" councilman.



"I second the motion"

As former councilmember Dan Clawson faces the cold reality that other members of city council did NOT have a secret council meeting regarding the Master Builders, and his politically-motivated frivolous lawsuit is being seen for what it is, Dan is desperately trying to save face by offering the secondary claim that the open public meetings act was violated by a few members of council holding one-on one conversations about the 2007 council president. Because two separate council members had phoned me at different times with concerns about Toni Nelson holding this position, and I phoned Toni to advise her of the concerns, Dan asserts that this was somehow an illegal secret meeting of the city council that he needs to sue the city for.

He claims to be shocked, shocked, that such discussions about council president would ever occur, even though he was involved in such discussions himself. I specifically remember Dan asking for my support in advance the year we selected Dan as council president.

Because Dan is wastefully suing the city council for this, I thought it was particularly interesting that today's Seattle Times shows the city of Bellevue Council is making no secret of the fact that they are all lobbying one another very heavily as they jockey for Mayor, which in their city-manager system is a council-elected position.


Here is the article in the Times:

Council members jockey for Bellevue mayor

By Ashley Bach

Seattle Times Eastside bureau


Monday meeting
The Bellevue City Council will pick the mayor and deputy mayor at 6 p.m. Monday at City Hall, 450 110th Ave. N.E.

The race for mayor of Bellevue, which unfolds with phone calls and cajoling among the seven City Council members, appears to be wide open this year.

Four council members, including current Mayor Grant Degginger, have called their colleagues to try to rally support before the council chooses a mayor Monday night. Deputy Mayor John Chelminiak and council members Phil Noble and Conrad Lee also want the job, according to council members.

The mayoral job is a largely ceremonial position in Bellevue because the city manager runs the day-to-day operations. But it's still highly coveted because the mayor is considered the public face of the city, attending countless events, fielding calls from reporters and shaping the council's agenda.

"It's a title that carries weight," Chelminiak said. "People look to the mayor for the city's position, and you need to reflect that."

The selection process happens every two years and usually develops in private, one-on-one conversations. The council members, who generally give their opinions on just about anything that affects the city, declined to say who they're choosing, and Degginger and Lee are the only candidates who publicly acknowledged they're running.

"It's like picking the pope," Chelminiak joked. "... You're not supposed to say you're seeking the position when you really are."

Each of the four candidates brings something to the table:

• Degginger has served as mayor for two years while the city has enjoyed a building boom, and he can argue for continuity. Consecutive terms as mayor are still relatively rare, though Councilmember Connie Marshall was mayor for four years before Degginger took over.

• Chelminiak is wrapping up his term as deputy mayor, another position the council will fill Monday and which is sometimes considered a steppingstone to mayor.

• Noble was deputy mayor during Marshall's second term and narrowly lost the mayor spot to Degginger in 2006. Lee was the deciding vote.

• Lee has been on the council since 1994, the longest current stint among council members, but has never served as mayor or deputy mayor. He says he deserves the post because of the city's accomplishments over the past decade, including a more conservative, long-term budget and improvements to parks and social programs.

The candidates sometimes have to promise things to their colleagues to gain votes, such as a high-profile spot on a regional committee, which the mayor helps appoint, or the deputy mayor slot for a supporter, said Council Member Don Davidson, who's run for mayor a half-dozen times and has served once.

The outcome can be in doubt even leading into the council meeting, as it was two years ago, when Lee shifted his support to Degginger.

The process probably will be nicer than in the 1980s and early '90s, when the council was split into growth and no-growth factions, council members said. But it could still be awkward for a body that prides itself on 7-0 votes.

"It's a lot more cordial, I think," Davidson said. "But it's still nerve-racking."

Ashley Bach: 206-464-2567 or abach@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

Clawson's resignation surprises Renton council
By Karen Johnson

Times Southeast Bureau


Dan Clawson served for nearly 12 years.

In the midst of a high-profile lawsuit, Renton City Councilman Dan Clawson has resigned halfway through his third elected term in office.

He says he wants to focus more on his family and legal practice.

"It just got to be too much to keep up with things," Clawson said.

The Renton lawyer broke the unexpected news at a Dec. 10 City Council meeting.

"It was a total surprise," Councilman Don Persson said.

Clawson has spent nearly 12 years serving the city.

The Texas native was elected to office in 1995, but lost a 1999 re-election race to Persson. In 2000, he returned as an appointed member when Bob Edwards left to become a Port of Seattle commissioner. Clawson was re-elected in 2001 and 2005.

Although he is known for his avid support of affordable housing, downtown development and levee-improvement projects, much of his legacy will be marked by a lawsuit he filed in September against Denis Law, Persson, Randy Corman and Marcie Palmer.

Clawson accused his colleagues of violating the Open Public Meetings Act. Clawson said that the four council members communicated outside of council chambers before voting on an ordinance that would require builders to meet certain design standards on single-family homes, among other allegations. The four council members denied the charges.

Clawson says his resignation had nothing to do with the lawsuit, but it did create tension on the council.

"I'm kind of soured on the whole thing," Clawson said. "The political climate in Renton has turned so negative that it's almost a toxic environment."

Fellow council members said it was difficult to work on a team whose members were bickering.

"There's no question that Dan suing four members of the council doesn't work toward building positive relationships," Law said.

Clawson made no mention of the lawsuit during his resignation.

Dec. 10 was also the final meeting of outgoing councilwoman Toni Nelson and Mayor Kathy Keolker who lost her re-election bid last month to Law.

Clawson is one of three council members who endorsed Keolker.

He leaves his position Jan. 1 along with Keolker and Nelson. The City Council will appoint a replacement to fill his seat next year.

Clawson hopes his departure will help improve the atmosphere on the council. "If resigning will help them conduct more business, this will be a positive thing," he said.

Karen Johnson: 253-234-8605 or karenjohnson@seattletimes.com.

I'm giving our lawyer one more week to try to quietly resolve Dan Clawson's politically-motivated frivolous open-meetings lawsuit. If they can not get it settled by then, I am going to start covering more details about it on my blog again. Several readers have asked about it.

In the process of looking though thousands of old computer records, I found that the only person who ever broke the email rules, and sent an email to four council members (and not all) on a council issue WAS DAN CLAWSON HIMSELF. Yep, he's a hypocrite.

While Dan Clawson missed most of his council meetings and committee meetings in December, as of TODAY he is back to serving my daytime-employer and others with REVISED subpoeana's again. Meanwhile, I become more offended each time he opens his mouth.

If it's just rhetoric intended to shake me, Dan might want to review some history to figure out where this is going. In my twenties I resisted a condemnation of my home by Dan's hero Kathy Keolker and the rest of city hall...I fought all the way to King County Superior Court. I did not back down under pressure from the full council, mayor, and city attorney. And I prevailed.

What makes Dan think that now that I have two-decades of additional experience, I am going to be intimidated by a mistaken and confused Dan Clawson, a man who resigned from council (and his own neighborhood association) because he can't get along with so many people anymore? Especially when Dan "has a fool for a client" (he's representing himself). In addition to proving this "fool" wrong, I intend to show that he is abusing the legal process for political purposes and to harass me (because of his personal vendetta/obsession against me).

Out of kindness to Dan and his family, I have provided everything Dan asked for, to try to get Dan to to wise up before he further embarrasses himself. And he has found nothing to support his imaginary secret meeting.

If Dan refuses to settle, the only viable offensive strategy Dan has left is to try bleed the city financially with a year-long lawsuit process (with paperwork that Dan files himself) in the hopes that taxpayers will want to call it off at some point in the future, and let Dan score a partial victory by forfeit. I'm extremely reluctant to let him ever get away with this, and I will personally-fund a legal counter-attack before I do.

His only other possible strategy is to try to back away from his secret-builder-meeting claim, and instead focus on his later claim that several council members did not want Toni Nelson to be council president in 2007 (For this to not humiliate Dan, he would have to be hoping that citizens won't notice that he completely changed issues). Since we voted for Toni unanimously, it will be tough for Dan to show that a few one-on-one phone calls of this nature between council members constituted any form of "action", or that there was anything inappropriate about them at all. If he wants to get into this, then I'm sorry for Toni's sake, but to Dan I say bring it on.

Hopefully, he will settle.

I'm just glad he's off the council.

In a comment on a recent entry I posted, a reader asked me how I explained the post-it notes during council meetings. Dan Clawson asserted to the newspapers that these proved council members were guilty of secret meetings, so what about these notes?

I pointed out on that blog that  the note Dan built his case around proved Marcie Palmer's innocence, not guilt, as she passed Don Persson a note during a meetings saying "did you talk to Garrett?" This is not a question that a councilmember would ask another if they had both just met with Garrett Huffman along with two other council members.

But, I think many readers may be intrigued that there is any note passing at all, and I thought I would shed light on that. I guess I can't say with certainty that we are managing this perfectly, but I am confident that we are not violating open Public Meetings act with our notes.

First, I must point out that not every post-it note is intended to be passed to anyone.  I frequently write notes on a pad to remind me of what I intend to say when I get the floor.  Often, these notes will take the form of an argument I intend to present, such as "Taxes have already gone up X %, that is too much for one year."  this is a speaker's note that loses its retention value the moment the words are uttered for the record, if it ever even had value in the first place.  Some of Dan's garbage can notes may have been of this type, although I don't know because I do not believe any of them were mine.

 But some notes are passed, and here is some information on them:

The note passing occurred occasionally prior to 1995, and then picked up a little after that when we added cameras and live video feeds to the chamber. Currently, I might see about one or two of these handwritten notes per evening.

They come about from a few sources.

Some of the "notes" getting passed are actually committee reports, that are getting final signatures during the beginning of the council meeting. This happens because we have numerous committee meetings on Monday afternoon, and it is often a scramble to get the reports written up and signed for the meeting...if there are any last-minute changes, the audience might see a report make its way up and down the dais as the committee members add signatures.

Some of the notes are greeting cards, being passed back and forth for council signatures. We sign these for serious illnesses of employees, deaths of family members, retirements of key employees, birthdays of fellow council members and our support staff, etc. This can add up to a lot of cards, and a lot of "passing" back and forth.

Since the meeting is broadcast on live TV, and replayed over and over during the week, quite a few of the notes that get passed have to do with production issues, or schedule issues that we wish to resolve off-air. Production issues are things like "is your microphone on?...I can't hear you"....or "your herringbone jacket looks crazy on the screen..perhaps you should change it". Others I have seen have been "do you think it is too hot in here?", "do you recommend we call a break?", "Did the clerk tell you there is an executive session after the meeting tonight?," "Do you have a copy of the Planning and Development Report?", "May I borrow your budget book?", "pass the coffee" and things like this. You can see how many of these questions are not worth interrupting the flow of the meeting for, and when stated outloud they interrupt whoever has the floor because they get picked up by very sensitive microphones.

Another group of notes are handed to us by staff during the meetings, to inform us of last-minute agenda changes, announcements we need to make, absences of other members, kudos, apologies, and a host of other normal interpersonal communications.

Another class of notes are those in advance of our announcing the next week's committee schedule. Often, a committee chair will decide that due to audience comment or other input, they will need additional committee time to cover a future agenda topic. Hence, they may pass a note that says "I would like to start Public Safety Committee at 4:00 instead of 4:30" When this happens, the chair of the committee which meets right before Public Safety might send a note that says "okay...I'll start Community Services at 3:30 instead of 4:00" This all gets finalized under new business, when the committee chairs each announce their final choice for their meeting times and agendas, and work out any remaining schedule issues in real time right on the floor.

Still other notes can be passed during the audience comment section of the agenda, and usually relate to questions a council member may have regarding the speaker. "Did she say she is the president of the neighborhood association?" for example, or "What was this speaker's name again?" Sometimes, the note may be "this is the person who wrote the letter that is in our docket", or "do you know if this speaker spoke with the police yet?", or "is she your neighbor?," or "did you talk with him before the meeting?"

Lastly, there are notes that blur all these categories, or are just intended to be light-hearted, or may vent about a colleague who is talking too much, or a collegue who seems to be campaigning from the chambers. I've seen more than one note which has said "__________ is annoying me tonight."

In summary, most notes have an administrative purpose of some type, represent no "official action", and have no retention value.

I'm not very shy, and I have 14 years on council, so I will usually ask for the floor and blurt out my question to whoever will answer. This leaves me less apt to use post-it notes to get the details I want, but it requires an extrovert-streak and a good spine for dealing with glares I receive from certain colleagues for dragging the meeting out with my questions. Other members understandably tend to use notes more for administrative stuff.

As you can imagine, it took me by surprise when Dan Clawson told the Renton Reporter that he found out that council members were exchanging notes on the council floor. My first reaction was "where has he been for the last twelve years?"

Then, when presented with the notes, which Dan thought were a smoking gun, I could tell quickly that they showed that Marcie had no idea if Don had spoken with Garrett Huffman. You didn't need to be a detective to see that. There were also a couple of jabs in some of the notes Dan pulled from the waste can, but my goodness, Dan and Terry Briere had both openly insulted me, the audience commenter, and others in the chamber, and Dan was openly politicking (he even mentioned campaigning if my memory serves) so I can't blame Don Persson or Marcie for exchanging a private post-it note criticism about Dan, Terri, or Kathy that night. It would never have been seen again, if Dan hadn't done his trash dive and sent his rubbish to the newspapers.  To see why Don and Marcie would exchange written criticisms, here is my blog from immediately after the meeting, and another one from the next day, before I knew Dan was hatching a lawsuit.

In summary, saying we held a secret council meeting because notes were exchanged makes about as much sense as saying that King 5 News did a "secret news broadcast" because Jean Enersen received a note while she was anchoring. Furthermore, Dan's shocked reaction to the newspapers about "his discovery" of these notes was insincere and hypocritical, given that he has been exchanging them himself for 12 years.

Councilman Dan Clawson sent an email to my attorney yesterday, which finally showed signs that he recognizes his mistake.  I probably would not have even mentioned this, in hopes that it leads to settlement, except that today I am still expending personal time dealing with Dan's subpoenas.  

Below is the text of the email he sent to my attorney, Mike Kenyon.  His text is in black, and my reaction is in lavender.


>>> From Dan Clawson 12/5/2007 4:11 PM >>> 

Mike,

Your clients may not believe this, but it is really not my intent to embarrass
them or to use this legal action for some political advantage.  

You are right Dan....we don't believe you.  If this was not politically motivated, why did you send it to the Seattle Times and the Renton Reporter weeks before you legally served it.  And why did you accompany it with a political letter? And why did I first hear about it via a Kathy Keolker campaign worker, wearing one of Kathy's campaign buttons, before almost everyone else knew about it (an hour after you filed it).  And why were you bellowing campaign rhetoric at the council meeting the evening of the alleged events, before you pulled the all-nighter that resulted in your angsty first-draft of your lawsuit.  You were active in Kathy Keolker's campaign, it was the peak of campiign season, Keolker needed a miracle to win, you devised a dirty trick, and it backfired on you.  You have lied too much in the past for any of us to believe you now.   If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, its a duck!

I do feel compelled to see that the truth comes out and am willing to invest whatever time
and money is necessary to do that. 

The truth has already come out from everyone except you and the other Kathy Keolker's supporters who trumped up this frivolous lawsuit.  With regard to openess, I've been blogging freely, and will stand behind everything I have said.  I also put all my city email in an open notebook.  Don Persson, Marcie Palmer, and Denis Law all followed my lead, and started placing all of their email in a public notebook, for public consumption a year ago.  You alone have been reluctant to take this step, because you have stated repeatedly you may have something in your email you wish to hide.  But we don't need to spend more money for the truth to come out...you and Kathy Keolker just need to fess up.  Feel free to do so in the comment section below.  Oh, and start putting your email in a book where we can look at it.

Finally, the fact that you are "willing to invest whatever (taxpayer) time and money is necessary" to prove an errant assumption could get you recalled....you may want to rethink this position.

Even if there is definitive proof of my  factual allegations there will no doubt be disagreements over whether the proven facts constitute OPMA violations.  

Ahh...this is where your letter gets interesting.  You actually recognize and admit that there may not be proof of your  alleged "facts", and that  even if there was proof, the facts may not constitute Open Public Meeting Act (OPMA) violations.  I guess the baseless, slanderous position you took is starting to sink in a little.  Do they teach you in law school to make stuff up, declare it to be fact, send your fiction to the newspapers, and argue to the world that acts are illegal even when you are not sure of of it?

OPMA is very hard to comply with and every elected official under it makes mistakes I am sure.

I'll accept this as a confession of  your personal violations of this act.  You knew I had you because of your email on the swimming pool, didn't you?  So why didn't you mention to the newspapers  that you YOURELF have violated OPMA?  Was it because such a confession would have hurt Kathy Keolker's dirty trick perhaps?

 At some point it may become an appealing option for your clients to just acknowledge those mistakes and then make a public commitment to furthering open government.   

Okay....good idea....I admit YOU made mistakes.  And I will hold you more accountable to open government in the future....starting with your email.

So, you are finally interested in settling this stupid thing.  I can't agree to meetings that never happened, or emails I never sent, but I don't mind agreeing with you that a quarum of a public body should never take official action, including deliberation, outside of an open public meeting.  I like this law.  I spent half a year chairing a City of Renton Committee trying to help us figure out how to make certain we did not accidentally violate it.  (You may remember this, as you served on this committee, and showed up now and then.  At the time, you told the committee that some of your legal clients were sending you email at Renton City Hall occasionally, and that you did not want the city clerk processing your email.  Remember?).  

Anyways, I've confessed my personal violations of the act...  Zero. (You are right...that was an appealing option).  And you have confessed to your OPMA violations above.  So why don't you drop your dumb lawsuit already?


In fact, I wonder why they are not doing that now given what is to me and others obvious conduct of city
business without the required public notice and access. 

You "wonder" because you have possibly had a break with reality.   As soon as you return to earth, this will all make more sense to you.

However, I acknowledge a theoretical possibility that there could be some alternative explanation for
the information that I have or that the information may in some way be inaccurate. 

Very good Dan.  This is a first step in your recovery.  In all seriousness, this sentence seems like the smartest, most insightful thing I have seen you write in months.  This kind of thought process could get you back on track.  In fact, if you did a little more of it, I might even start to trust you a little.  I suspect the time away from Kathy Keolker has been good for you.  I just wish you had thought of this before falsely telling two million Seattle Times readers that your colleagues broke the law.

I look forward to receiving Randy Corman's documents... 

You stalker!  :-)

Dan

Fresh from embarrassing Kathy Keolker numerous times with his lies about lie-detectors and his backfiring political stunts, Councilman/attorney Dan Clawson is now about to humiliate last year's Council President by publicly questioning us all about whether she was really everyone's first choice. This council president was elected unanimously, but Dan Clawson wants everyone to openly share any misgivings they had about her on the public record.

Dear Dan,

Yes, there were some one-on-one discussions about council president for 2007, as there always are when we chose a council president. I'm quite sure you were involved in some of these yourself. I phoned the council president (before she was elected) to communicate some concerns so that she could address them. Some members appeared to be concerned that she might not be able to adequately represent all council members, and we might therefore see some divisiveness during the year. (Looking at how the year went, it looks like these members may have been right.)

As always, I've got nothing to hide. I'll blog anything you want to know about this...just leave me a signed comment below.

But last year's council president put her heart into the task, and I think we should let her retire in peace.

He rummages through my garbage cans after I leave the room, looking for any scraps of paper I have left behind. He wants to know who I have spoken to, at city hall, at my day job, and at home. In a state of agitation, he writes letters to newspapers full of paranoid speculations, and he spends all night typing out a a crazed manifesto. He obsessively reviews my email, wondering what I have said each day for the last two years, and imagining what it is like to be me. He seems jealous of my friendships. He writes to the paper, and tells the world that he thinks it's okay to strike "fear" in public officials.

In a period of peak frustration, he barged into my office, with a raised voice, declaring "war" on me. On another occasion, he waved his arms wildly about his head, making "thwaping" noises, talking about black helicopters, and refusing to stop when a councilwoman became alarmed by his behavior.

Who am I talking about? Some famous celebrity stalker? Nope, Councilman and local attorney Dan Clawson.

Today, Dan Clawson announced that he has no intention of peacefully settling his frivolous lawsuit against the city, as he still wants more information. He is issuing subpoena after subpoena, disturbing my peace at home and at work, trying to get more information about my life, under the guise that he thinks I should pay a one-hundred dollar fine for talking to a constituent (and I didn't even talk to him!)

Meanwhile, Dan Clawson misses more and more council meetings and committee meetings, while still collecting his council salary. Last night, a huge night for city council committees and a full council meeting, he did not even call to let anyone know he would not be there. We had a state of emergency, with streets flooded, a 3-alarm fire in downtown and seventy fire fighters involved in the response. We received updates from public works director, and our fire chief, but Dan didn't bother to show up.

As I put in my six and a half hours at city hall yesterday, helping manage everything from declaring a state of emergency, completing and approving the city's 2008 budget, reviewing regional governance issues, deciding on how we are going to manage the reconstuction of Coal Creek Parkway, approving the 17,000-person Benson Hill annexation, approving the 60% petition to annex hundreds of additional homes on Maple Valley highway including seniors at Wonderland Estates, Presiding over an appeal that should have been heard by one of Dan's committees, and dozens of smaller issues, Dan was nowhere to be found.

Dan Clawson had even set the agenda for part of the Committee of the Whole, asking for us to reserve time for him to discuss emerging issues in regional governance. We got to that part of the evening, and staff awkwardly admitted they were not really prepared because they thought Dan would lead the discussion. But no one knew where he was, so we winged it.

Council observers could tell that the rest of the council almost did not excuse Dan Clawson's absence, something I have never seen before in 14 years. Roll call was taken, Dan was announced as being absent, and then there was silence as most of us pondered why in the world he would not have told anyone he wasn't going to be in on such an important night, on top of shirking his responsibilities in previous weeks. Finally, Toni Nelson made a motion to excuse Dan, there was another overly-long pause, and then Terri Briere seconded. Perhaps predictably, the council members not being frivolously sued had an ounce more patience for Dan's unexplained and prolonged absence. (Not feeling like arguing, I voted for the motion.)

I'm now almost embarrassed to admit that I recruited Dan for his first term on City Council back in 1995, and I even paid his filing fee. I endorsed him when he ran for re-election three times in a row. And one time when he lost, I presided (as council president) over his re-appointment to a seat vacated by Bob Edwards.

Mark Twain once wrote "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man."

I guess I understand the type of person Mark Twain was referring to when he penned this wisdom.

Most of us on council were hoping that Councilmember Dan Clawson would drop his frivolous and politically-motivated lawsuit after the election.  Instead, he only seems more emotional, and is starting to cost our city more money than ever.

Our City funded attorney's request is provided here

And Dan's incomplete response is provided here

The first thing that jumps out of Dan's response is that almost everywhere he made false allegations about his colleagues, and was asked for documentation or evidence to justify his statements, Dan responded by writing the following: "Plaintiff objects to this interogatory on the ground that it is overly broad and unduly burdensome" (followed by his signature.)

Gee Dan, sorry to burden you by asking you to prove your many lies.  Maybe you should have thought about this burden before you submitted your work-of-fiction to the court.  You can bet our attorney is going to hold you accountable for every single statement you made in your court submittal, particularly since you sent it to every newspaper in town.

But below is the most interesting paragraph in the whole thing.  Apparently, Dan has based his entire case on the fact that a lobbyist allegedly told some people he had four votes.  Apparently, Dan does not have any idea who these claimed votes were, or whether the lobbyist may have just inferred that he had four votes.  Of course, it's possible that if the statement was made, it was a bluff on the part of the lobbyist...I'm sure it would not be the first time a lobbyist has bluffed someone.  It's a negligently-weak hearsay statement, with no actual council members identified, to use as a basis to slander me.  .  Now, Dan Clawson admits (under threat of perjury,) that my name was never mentioned, and that he has no evidence... only a foolish assumption he has made from a hearsay statement.

Maybe Dan Clawson, Toni Nelson, or  Terri Briere were other council members that the lobbyist was referring to.  Who really knows.

Ironically, Dan has "witnesses" who heard Mr. Huffman talk about how many votes he claims to have had. If any of these witnesses are Dan's friends on council or in the mayor's office, then THEY in fact may be guilty of whatever Dan is trying to accuse me of (since unlike me, they DID talk to Garrett Huffman before the vote,) and Dan himself seemed to have gone into that council meeting with much more knowledge of a vote count than I had. I will ask our attorney to ask who these mystery witnesses are. Dan was a fool not to drop this false and frivolous lawsuit.  As a political dirty trick, it backfired on him.  Now, it's going to just cost the city money and embarrass Dan further.  

What a meltdown Dan Clawson is experiencing. If I understand his letter to the Seattle Times correctly, I think he is now starting to imply that he thinks his council colleagues are planning to lie under oath. Maybe it is time to get the polygraph out for Dan Clawson, the one council member who has proven himself to be a liar. Dan even goes on to imply it is his job to "put fear in" the council....presumedly through his abuse of the court system and his trail of lies.

In particular, this statement in Dan's letter seems worrisome "What's wrong with putting some fear into elected officials who think they are above the law?"

One thing wrong with it Mr. Clawson is RCW 9A.76.180, which makes it a CLASS B FELONY to Intimidate a public servant.

"(1) A person is guilty of intimidating a public servant if, by use of a threat, he attempts to influence a public servant's vote, opinion, decision, or other official action as a public servant. " The law goes on to claify that the threat does not have to be physical....threatening a bogus lawsuit could very likely be enough to convict someone for this crime. And it's a maximum ten year prison sentence.

So Dan, before you rally others to follow your reckless lead, you may want to think about this RCW and take back your statements about instilling fear in those of us still trying to get the city's business done. There are still jobs to do here at city hall, and we would welcome you back if you can just pull yourself together. While I have never felt above the law, YOUR behavior is becoming increasingly alarming, and it is looking like it is you who feels he is above the law.

Here is Dan's letter from today's Times-

( Read more... )

This describes exactly what Renton Councilman Dan Clawson has done to try to assist Mayor Keolker's campaign.

Click here to read the op ed piece by two attorneys who are experts in Open Public Meetings law.

(I wrote this mid-week but held off publishing this until Dan returned from his vacation, to keep his home safe)

Dan Clawson halted routine processing and management of email last week in his futile effort to find an email supporting a secret meeting that never occurred.

After placing this hold on the-city wide email system, he failed to follow-up with a detailed public records request to inform the clerk what she was looking for. Instead,  he took  a vacation while the clerk struggled to determine what to do next.

( Read more... )

Dan sent ANOTHER letter full of false allegations and imaginary secret meetings to the Renton Reporter!

Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave When First We Practice to Deceive

Poor Councilman Dan Clawson... I think his sense of reasoning and observation have completely departed him lately.

After hearing that four of us ( An engineer, a retired police officer, a publisher, and a soccer mom) are eagerly willing to sign affidavits and be deposed under oath stating that none of Dan's politically-motivated and false accusations are true, Dan is now making up new conversations-that-never-happened to try to embellish his story.

Dan is a liar. More disturbingly, people close to Dan have told me that they think Dan may actually believe his own lies even with so many rational and respectable people are showing him the evidence to the contrary... such a situation could make someone a "pathological liar."

Marcie Palmer and I once witnessed a disturbing scene during the height of the mayor's Highlands problems and Lipstickgate; a scene which I won't soon forget. We went back to the office area after a council meeting, and saw Dan Clawson waving his arms above his head saying ''' oooh ...black helicopters...thwap, thwap, thwap...oooh black helicopters.... *arms waving wildly*. I smiled, assuming it was a weird joke, and said "okay Dan". But then "thwap, thwap, thwap.... ooooh black helicopters..." Okay Dan...I said more seriously. But then AGAIN thwap, thwap.....*arms waving wildly over head*. I wasn't sure what the point of his joke was, if it was a joke, but he did it for a full minute or two...it had gone on way too long to be funny. At that point Marcie and I each walked directly into our respective offices. I remained in mine for about ten minutes until I was sure that Dan had gone.



I don't know if Dan is freaking out on his own, or if the pressure of working with Kathy Keolker on her mudslinging, hate-filled, crash-and-burn campaign has put him over the edge. But it has become unseemly for a councilman and attorney.

And I don't know what the procedures are when I become concerned that my council colleague is losing his grip on reality. Do I ask for a restraining order? Do I ask residents to start a recall drive? Do I demand his resignation on the floor of the council? As always, I welcome your ideas and advice.

Dear Editor,

I think it's important that we get the facts straight on what happened at
the council meeting that spurred Dan Clawson's frivolous law suit, which
will now cost the taxpayers astronomical amounts of public funds so he can
vent his frustration about a vote that he didn't like.

Dan Clawson (who just leveled false open-meetings allegations against his colleagues) used an illegal email conversation amongst a quorum of his colleagues to try to stall or kill the Henry Moses Aquatic Center in 2002. He had selected three other members of the council that he thought were against the pool, and lobbied them hard in his secret email "meeting" to halt the project.

While Councilmember Kathy Keolker and Terri Briere took Dan's side, Dan miscalculated with Don Persson who came out in favor of the proposed aquatic center. (Yay Don!) Don joined me, King Parker, and Toni Nelson to give us the four needed to push the funding through.

Ultimately, on the advice of city attoney Zanetta Fontes, I read Dan Clawson's email aloud at the council meeting to put it into the public record. While I did not elaborate at the meeting, I did this to assure the final council vote could not be overturned on any possible open-meetings violation complaint regarding Dan's email. Dan later followed me into my office agitated and red-faced, screaming "This means war Corman...this means war!" and DEMANDED to know where I got his email.... insisting that his privacy had been invaded. (But I had come across this email very harmlessly, after our council secretary had found it on the council records system, noticed several council members had not been included in it, and put a hardcopy of it on our desks, as part of her normal job duities)

Kathy Keolker (as a council member) had tried everything to kill the Henry Moses Aquatic Center until she saw Don Persson give it support in the final decision-making meeting.

We completed the pool in December 2003, the month Mayor Tanner left office. We had a ceremony for it's dedication, complete with a plaque bearing Jess Tanner's name at the top, as the mayor who made it happen. His family was so proud.

Five months later, Kathy Keolker put a new plaque on the pool building with her own name at the top as mayor.

CLICK HERE to see the minutes from my reading Dan's illegal email into the record, and the swimming pool debate that followed.

Thanks!

Randy

P.S. Denis Law helped us get the aquatic Center as well, with his strong Renton Reporter editorials in favor of this project.

As readers know, Dan Clawson is lying about me and suing me because he lost in a four-to- three vote a week ago, after verbally attacking Marcie Palmer, insulting me and his other colleagues, and then fumbling the rest of the debate apparently due to anger issues.

What you may not know, is that Dan Clawson (as either a councilman or the mayor's attorney, I'm not sure which) harassed me endlessly during the Mayor's lipstick scandal, even though the mayor had started the whole thing herself.  At that time, after getting frustrated with his constant annoying emails, I asked him in an email why the mayor was refusing to take a like detector test.

Here is how the Renton Reporter quoted Dan Clawson in a published article in their June 21, 2006 edition.  (He tried hard to convince the world that I was making things up.)

As part of the police investigation, detectives conducted lie detector tests.  In a May 11 email, Clawson admonished Corman for spreading "rumors" that Keolker refused to take a lie-detector test.  "In the email that you sent me at 10:57 a.m. this morning, you state that Kathy is refusing to take a lie detector test.  At Denis Law's suggestion, I am copying the entire council as it is of concern to all of us.   I just spoke with Kathy.  She is very concerned about saying anything at all about the investigation, including whether or not she was asked to take a polygraph test.  You can talk to her directly, of course, if you think that she should be willing to publicize that information.  What Kathy has told me, and she will tell anyone who asks her, is that she has cooperated fully with the investigation.  She has answered every question truthfully, and done every act that she was requested to do by the investigation" Clawson added.

And here are excepts from the police investigation, which reveal how deceitful Dan's comments were:

On May 18, 2006, Detective Dave Patterson with Kent PD made the following comments in a written statement, which is part of his investigation:

Following a taped interview with the mayor on April 26, 2006, Detective Patterson turned off the tape recorder, at which time the mayor asked where all of this is going. Det. Patterson advised her that they had to investigate every angle. 'I advised her that the charges could range from burglary, theft, trespass to false reporting. I explained that we had to look at all possible situations. I advised her that we would be asking people for the possibility of polygraph tests. At this point the mayor advised me that as the Chief Executive Officer of the City, she felt she had a responsibility to the citizens to not expend taxpayer money on something like this any further. She stated that she needed for this to go away as soon as possible. I advised her that we had an investigation to conduct and that I would be getting back with her.'

On May 2, 2006, I did speak briefly with Randy Corman. He called to advise me of a telephone call he had got from Jay Covington, who was back at a FEMA conference with the mayor this past week. He stated that Jay was basically saying the mayor wanted him and Julia to not take the polygraph and to call off the investigation. Randy mailed me a saved audio copy of the message. I had this message transcribed and a copy is included with this report.

On May 4, 2006, Detective Kelly and I met with Randy Corman and he did take a polygraph test and no deception was observed.

On May 5, 2006, Julia Medzegian met with Det. Kelly and I and she took a polygraph. No deception was observed.

On May 8, 2006, I called the mayor's office and left her a message that I would like to speak with her about the case. I was away from my desk and got a call back and voice mail advising to call her after 1030 hours. At about 10:50 hours, I called her back. I spoke with her and advised her that I was at a point where I was getting close to wrapping up the investigation. I advised her that several people had submitted to polygraph tests and I asked her if she would do the same. At this point, the mayor declined to take the polygraph test. She stated that she could not justify the resources being diverted to this case even though they were Kent resources. She stated that the investigation had gotten way out of control. She stated that she needed to find a way to gracefully bring this to a close.

In spite of the late-night jokes, there really are many hardworking and honest attorneys out there. I've had the pleasure to have known and worked with many of them..  But I can sure see where some can develop reputations for being untrustworthy, especially when they have guilty clients.

The complete record can be found here.

Councilman Dan Clawson has told me in the past that he occasionally performs private legal work for mayor Kathy Keolker.  He insists  that there are no problems with this.

But I think he should never have started doing private legal work for her, since it puts him in a professional conflict  whenever the mayor and the council get in to disagreements.  It's comparable to the nepotism issues when Kathy Keolker was married to Renton's fire chief; it works okay when everything is going smooth, but it causes problems quickly when there is any kind of conflict (in that case it resulted in restraining orders between mayor Keolker and the fire chief).

I warned Mr. Clawson during the Mayor's Lipstick scandal that the legal situation between him and the mayor had become difficult for the rest of us on council to understand....was he a councilman, or her attorney, whenever we were communicating with him?  He told me he could be both, but I should have told him then that it was unacceptable.

This latest episode could cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars, and is having an incredibly negative impact on Renton city staff.   Dan's lawsuit is unwinnable because the truth is against him, but even if he could win, the maximum penalty to the city and other officials (like me) is $100.  Meanwhile, I am stuck watching this play out, because even if I wanted to, I can't legally agree to admit to something that never happened.   While I found Dan's latest antics oddly amusing, they are not so funny for those people that work for the city full-time and are trying to keep things moving smoothly while Dan's false allegations and my resultant ethics complaints against him work themselves out.

I'm getting reports that staff are being approached by the mayor and her allies, and then seen crying at their desks hours later.

There is no recovery possible for Mayor Keolker at this time.  She can't win this race, and even if she did it would be impossible for council or the majority of the community  to ever trust her again.  It's like a hopelessly broken marriage, where there has been a betrayal.  She should resign.

And Dan Clawson has been part of the Mayor's undoing, and has destroyed his own credibility at the same time.  While he seems to have been trying to help the mayor, his reflex tendency to jump face-first into every one of the mayor's conflicts only exacerbates them.   He  manages to turn her juvenile behavior into full-blown and self-incriminating police investigations and expensive litigation.  While his garbage-can raiding is sadly amusing, his contrived efforts to try to implicate me and my colleagues in a phony meeting are reprehensible.  Dan dropped out of his own neighborhood association this morning, asking for his dues back.  If he can't even get along with his neighbors, does he think Renton citizens feel they can count on him for fair and positive representation?  Dan was defeated by Councilman Don Persson after his first-term in office, and he only regained his seat after council appointed him to a vacancy.  He went on to be rated 'adequate' by the municipal league, the lowest rating I have ever seen for a Renton incumbant.  He should resign as well.

So Mayor Keolker, And Councilman Clawson,

I know you both read my blog.  So hear this.

Please do the honorable thing, and resign.

Randy Corman

Dan Clawson resigned from his own neighborhood association, citing complaints about the last neighborhood picnic.  I'm not making this stuff up folks!  He leveled specific complaints against some of the neighborhood leadership.

Perhaps some of these folks may want to keep their garbage cans locked in their garage until they hear the trucks coming..

Seriously, several people have asked me whether I know how long Dan Clawson has been going through garbage cans at city hall.  Was this  something he had just done for the first time on Monday night, or has he been doing this for years?

I don't know the answer to this.  But I do know that I keep my office door open all day, so that other's at city hall can use my office as a meeting room when I am not present.  While I have absolutely nothing to hide, it never occurred to me that Dan might be going into my office and looking though my garbage until this week. 

For me, it's not so much a question of ethics or policy as it is a question of general creepiness. The only thing I remember putting in the garbage can under the council dais was my food scraps on Monday night, and what did he touch after he went through it?  And what if  I had dropped a private note from my wife or my kids into my council garbage.  Would Dan have taken this home with him?  Yikes.

Look at what his close relationship with Kathy Keolker has done to him.

I have recieved dozens of comments and emails about Dan Clawson's slumming though council garbage cans, reaching a paranoid conclusion, and embroiloing your city in a bogus lawsuit (that Dan Clawson wrote himself while in an agitated state-of-mind.) While I know the Keolker administation had something to do with this, I am trying to track down emails that show exactly who is to blame for this lawsuit. Ironically, my investigation has been slowed down by the fact that Dan Clawson and Terri Briere are the two council members who have not made their email available for public review without a formal freedom of information request. So I am having to go through an expensive process to get their email. Kathy Keolker also requires freedom of information requests for access to her email. (In contrast, my email, and most other councilmember's email, is available for inspection by any member of the public at any time)

You can see many of the strongly supportive comments on my web articles below, and I'll be seeking permission from the authors to post more of the emails on this website:

Meanwhile, to wet your appetite I'll start with Marcie Palmer's email to hundreds of supporters, and her first response back,.

Below that I've also added a couple Myspace comments I just received.

-------------- Forwarded Message: --------------
To: <pkplmarcie@comcast.net>
Subject: RE: Potential media attention
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2007 01:25:24 +0000


--
Please Re-Elect Marcie Palmer
www.Palmer2007.com
--
Please Re-Elect Marcie Palmer
www.Palmer2007.com

	Sep 22, 2007 11:55 AM Wow, Randy! You provide quite the diversion from my own troubles--it's so inspiring to see how you handle such rediculous attacks and make such a fun read out of everything. I really hate politics, but you certainly make it interesting. Thanks for sharing the council meeting with us, and the lawsuit, etc. I even went to Law's myspace--love the song! Sure wish I could vote up there! Keep up the great sharing! Stay positive. You sure have a lot of friends and family backing you because we all know your true character!
	Comment Back - Send Message - Block User - Delete My Comment
<input ... >	kari	Sep 21, 2007 12:06 AM I was just reading your website (at Katie's suggestion) and man, are we lucky to have you protecting our civic rights or WHAT?! The king, the photo genius and the best government official ever. I think it calls for a weekend party at your house. There's not one planned, you know. We've had one every week....just a thought. Really, thanks for all you do!
		Comment Back - Send Message - Block User - Delete My Comment

ed

Anyone who missed the September 17 city council melee, and still wants to see it, can watch right here on the internet!  Click Here, and select September 17 video.  If your player gives you a chance to jump partway though, take it;   the action everyone is talking about is in the last 30 minutes or so.