If you're not at the table, you're on the menu

Two days of closed-door meetings about public policy

This week, Clallam County Commissioner Mark Ozias is partnering with the North Olympic Development Council (NODC) led by its President, Mark Ozias, to host a “North Olympic Peninsula Summit on Energy and Climate Resilience.”

You’re paying for the event, and people whose salaries you pay will be there. Issues that affect your work and life will be discussed, but you are not invited or allowed to attend. Organizers wish you could be there, but they ran out of space and funds — “Due to budget and space constraints, this event is not open to the general public.”

There are larger venues that could accommodate public participation — the Vern Burton Community Center in Port Angeles or the Guy Cole Convention Center in Sequim. With planning, The County and NODC could have held the event at the larger Field Arts & Events Hall and even negotiated a price since the facility has recently received $300,000 in taxpayer funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and just under $600,000 from the County’s Lodging Tax fund.

On Monday, NODC Executive Director Karen Affeld admitted to County and Port commissioners that “this conference is not designed for the general public.”

It seems space and budget constraints weren’t the issue after all.

Affeld explained to the commissioners that the conference aims to gather stakeholder information to influence the County’s comprehensive plan update.

The County’s comprehensive plan guides decisions regarding land use, transportation, public utilities, housing, economic development, and parks and recreation. Considering the plan's vast reach, one might think every resident in Clallam County is a “stakeholder” — be it a homeowner seeking permit approval for a septic system or someone hoping to navigate building codes to open a new business. However, that’s not necessarily who the NODC views as stakeholders.

When it was announced that economically depressed Clallam County had been awarded $35 million through the Recompete federal grant to fund job growth, County Commissioner Mike French’s committee allotted nearly a quarter of that sum to his fellow commissioner, Mark Ozias, who heads the NODC. As president, Ozias’s job is to invest in “key regional stakeholders.” That supports his organization’s mission to “Empower the North Olympic Peninsula to pursue and invest in its own economic and environmental destiny.”

Who are the “key regional stakeholders” on the North Olympic Peninsula? Are they the nearly 200 recently unemployed workers from the McKinley Paper Mill? Is it the small business owners who employ our community but spend thousands to remove graffiti and replace smashed windows? Is it the non-profits who rushed to remove dangerous and unwanted dogs from our streets after the financial implosion of our Humane Society?

No, mostly stakeholders are determined by special interest status.

The two-day event is a showcase of public agencies and the nongovernmental organizations that are funded to influence them.

• Strait Ecosystem Recovery Network held a 2021 workshop focused on "grandfathered wells without meters" in the Sequim area that may "be using a lot of water." While the workshop emphasized insufficient water to support current residents, attendees prepared to accommodate refugee and homeless populations. The workshop also concluded that "we might need to relocate homeowners out of harm's way," and attendees proposed changing county and city comprehensive plans to achieve that goal. The workshop justified the relocation of property owners away from beaches by showing how devastating sea level rise could be. A "buy back" program would offset costs, but attendees admitted, “We need to make sure we're using taxpayer dollars wisely and not paying full price for parcels." The seminar generated many ideas that, if enacted, would restrict rural land ownership. This would all be done to help the ecosystem become more resilient, and the North Olympic Development Council, headed by Clallam County Commissioner Mark Ozias, was tasked with assisting in the seizure of property. The NODC is the fiscal and administrative coordinator for the Strait Ecosystem Recovery Network.

• Puget Sound Partnership co-authored the “Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Plan,” which determined that the Dungeness River Off-Channel Reservoir was necessary. The Puget Sound Partnership’s local office is the Strait Ecosystem Recovery Network (see above). The NODC advocates for the smaller Strait Ecosystem Recovery Network to the larger Puget Sound Partnership. In a complicated web of influence, the NODC also presents priorities and issues to the Ecosystem Coordination Board, which advises the Puget Sound Partnership’s Leadership Council.

• The Jamestown Tribe, City of Port Townsend, Jefferson County, and NODC belong to ICLEI. This German nongovernmental organization promotes a radical ideology that separates groups into “colonizers” and “colonized.” It aims to “build and serve a worldwide movement,” encourages “institutional reorganization” (or the establishment of a new organizational structure), and aims to “redress past harms through reparations” and a “political power shift.”

The event will be an economic boom for Commissioner Ozias’ top campaign donor, the Jamestown Tribe, which is hosting it. Attendees are offered a special rate to stay in their hotel, and the Tribe’s entertainment and dining options are just steps away.

The seminar is supported and funded through the “Climate Commitment Act” — a tax that has caused gas prices to soar in our state but has funneled millions to the Jamestown Tribe and the NODC. That could be why Commissioner Ozias used his elected position to promote a “no” vote on an initiative to repeal the tax, as did the Jamestown Tribe.

From the Jamestown Tribe’s August 2024 newsletter.

In other jurisdictions, citizens would be appalled that their elected officials use government resources funded by citizens to oppose citizen-led initiatives. They’d be astonished to learn that their elected representatives belong to an organization that seeks institutional reorganization and a political power shift. Residents would be stunned to see a sitting county commissioner also lead a nongovernmental organization tasked with influencing the County’s comprehensive plan, which the sitting commissioner is then in a position to approve.

Regular folks would call it a conflict of interest and an abuse of power. Here in Clallam County, we call it the annual NODC summit.

“Many have expressed belief that this work has taken place in private, without informing the public. One core belief I have as an elected official is that local government only works when citizens participate. It troubles me greatly to think that so many feel they have been left out of the process.” — Commissioner Mark Ozias, Facebook, August 2019.