The Board's Work

by Lindsay Thompson

Everett, December 10-11, 2004

As Dr. Watson might have written, this meeting presented The Case of the Disappearing Agenda. Everyone showed up, bright-eyed, ready to govern, fully apprised of the 390-page briefing book's contents, only to have several big, contentious items get pulled. The balance they could have faxed in on the consent calendar.

But there was no way to predict this, so the Board made the best of things.

After a long executive session, they convened at 11 a.m. Friday. They worked till 12:15, broke for lunch, reconvened at 1:30, then more or less ran out of things to do by 2:30 (see, the problem is when the people invited to present an item aren't there, you can't do anything about it).

So they recessed till 5:30, when there was a reception to meet the Snohomish County Bar. But it being a Friday night in the holiday season, attendance was a bit sketchy. The food was good, though.

Saturday morning the BOG reconvened at 8:30, and in a wave of unanimity, adjourned about 10:30.

Here's what got done:

A bunch of people got appointed to committees and boards. Tom Fitzpatrick gave an update on stuff the ABA is doing, he being one of our delegates to that august institution. One of our members, Bill Neukom (the snappy bow tie guy) wants to be ABA president. Apparently, the processes of the ABA are such that you have to declare a decade in advance. Tom put a resolution to the Board asking them to endorse Neukom's bid. They did, with enthusiasm, as having an ABA president is something Washington hasn't managed since the 1940s.

Governors Mark Johnson and Mike Pontarolo told the Board about investigations to find a sponsored liability insurance carrier for WSBA members. This has been a practice of WSBA for some considerable time, as it helps keep a carrier in the market when times are hard and no one wants to underwrite here.

The Legislature convenes in January and tort reform rears its tedious head again. So the Board skirmished over how to address new legislation that will repackage the old ideas in new ways. They ended up sticking to the principles they adopted last session.

Pete Karademos and Doug Lawrence of the Legislative Committee came in with a basket of bills asking the Board to endorse or support or sponsor them. Fortunately they were technical and housekeeping kinds of bills: service by publication in family-law cases where the parents have dropped the kids off with relatives and bolted; allowing counties to add a surcharge for county law library support; passing the Uniform Mediation and Revised Uniform Arbitration Acts; tidying up estate and trust legislation details; aligning Washington's medical records privacy laws with HIPAA; and the Uniform Estate Tax Apportionment Act put people into paroxysm.

Speaking of taxes, little did anyone know that a smoldering internecine struggle has been grinding along in the WSBA Section on Taxation for at least two years. A renegade member, finding the leadership had gotten too grand for its own good, focusing on sexy federal tax issues while practitioners of state and local tax law languished behind a veil of ignorance from a want of CLEs, brought the BOG a plan to create a Confederate Tax Section focusing on neglected state tax justice issues.

Section chair Bob Chicoine, as President Lincoln, argued most section members do state and federal taxes alike, and that John Piper, who wanted the new section, was the leader of a tiny band who shouldn't be complaining because they had been invited repeatedly into the big welcoming Tax Section tent. Besides, he said, eight of the 50 names Piper claimed support creation of the new section aren't those of WSBA members.

I think several hundred members will want to join, Piper rejoindered, but he couldn't say for sure because the section leadership denied him access to the section listserve to ask. "It's our policy," Chicoine told the Board. "We just don't give it out to anybody."

"Not even your own members?" a governor asked.

The section produced a letter from the head of the Department of Revenue saying it has been easier to work with more recent section leadership. Both claimed the support of the current chair of the section's state and local tax committee. Imprecations were cast about.

I was hoping things would go on a while. I thought the debate was taking on the look of a sort of B&O bitch-slap fest à la Dynasty. But the governors seemed to want to refer the whole thing to the "Can This Marriage Be Saved" columnist, and voted to deny the request for a new section.

Next month: Olympia, to see what the Westwater will be called this year. I'm outta here.