Grand Coulee forbids civil service separate lawyer

The independence of Grand Coulee’s Civil Service Commission is being challenged, chair Alan Cain said this week.

“Our attorney, Scott W. Detro, of Omak, has informed me that City Attorney Julie Norton has advised him not to do work for the Civil Service Commission because the city won’t pay him for it,” Cain said. He was advised that the CSC would have to use the city’s attorney for legal advice.

“Where’s the independence?” Cain asked.

The independence is being challenged by other means. City Councilmember David Tylor said this week that Norton had called him asking him to bring up the issue of excluding the police chief from Civil Service Commission protection at the next council meeting, even after Tylor was one of four council members who voted to keep the chief under civil service.

Tylor said that Norton had stated that the council could participate in the selection process if it was taken out of Civil Service hands.

“I think it’s a bad idea,” Tylor stated.

The Civil Service Commission is supposed to be able to operate independent of influence from the rest of the city.

An effort by Mayor Chris Christopherson to get the city council to remove the police chief position from Civil Service protection recently failed when the council voted against his proposal, 4-1.

The CSC started advertising for a new police chief last week, a couple of weeks later than it had planned for the ad to appear in both The Star newspaper and law enforcement journals in the state.

The delay was over a disagreement between the mayor and CSC on the wording of the advertisement.

The Grand Coulee council meets again, Tuesday, Nov. 18.