Klickitat County Board of Commissioners reflect on accomplishments of 2025

For 2026, he said he’d like to see follow-through on short term rentals, fireworks, solar and BESS ordinances, the critical area ordinance and the shoreline master plan

New Commissioner Todd Andrews said it took him a while to adjust to the slower pace of government.

“I’ve probably had more frustrations my first year here, just with the speed of government, being in private industry my whole life,” he said. “But we set things up, I think, for success for the coming years. And I appreciate this board’s work on that. I think we’ve made some really good decisions in putting Robb [Van Cleave] as county administrator and taking a slow, thoughtful approach, rather than just a knee-jerk reaction. I think that was wise, and in doing that, we’ll be better set up and prepared for the future.”

And Lori Zoller commented on a change in mood: “I think for me, it’s just the working of the board has been wonderful,” she said. “We’ve brought it back to civility. Mr. Ihrig said he was going to bring it back to boredom. I don’t know if we’re there yet, but I think that pretty much the soap opera was gone that we were living under, and all the things that came forward, like the comp plan, and the ADU and everything else that needed to be done, we’ve set those up so they’re going to be accomplished, finally.”

The board did move a few minor amounts of money within line items, which did not any change in the total budget amount. And they appointed Rebecca Cranston, who had been the only applicant, as the new county prosecuting attorney.

Our apologies to Ms. Cranston, as last week’s story inadvertently used her maiden name.

But the Tuesday session was not the final one for the year. A meeting on the 31st was billed as a continuation of the regular Dec. 30 meeting and dealt with a single subject — the public defender contract. By law, counties and cities in Washington are responsible for providing legal representation for people charged with crimes who cannot afford a lawyer.

At a time of shrinking budgets, this has become increasingly challenging for local governments. Klickitat County had published a request for proposals and only received one applicant, Attorney Lori Hoctor, who has been fulfilling that role.

“We are retaining Lori because of the Supreme Court ruling that the caseload goes down by 10% per year,” Ihrig said. “We have 10 years to get there, but it starts affecting us year one. This is going back to the Supreme Court that the state needs to help fund the decisions they make and put on us, because right now this is an unfunded mandate.”

He also said the negotiations had gone on until the last minute, with help from Skamania County Attorney Adam Kick.

The final contract lists the salary as $156,000 for 2026, $164,784 for 2027 and $177,132 for 2028. In order to respect the Supreme Court’s order, Hoctor will be limited to 135 felony cases in 2026, 121 in 2027 and 109 in 2028. The contract notes that an additional counsel will have to be retained in order to cover the remaining cases.

Ihrig added that there was enough money in budget to cover 2026, but that the county would probably have to add money in 2027 and definitely in 2028.

Under the consent agenda passed Dec. 30, commissioners approved:

• Publication of planned costs using County Forces in 2026 on construction projects

• Public Works foreman working outside their classification

• A resolution appointing a Klickitat County Commissioner to serve as representative to the WSAC Legislative Steering Committee

• An amendment to Motorola solutions agreement

• A resolution establishing a selective county-wide hiring freeze

• An appointment to the Klickitat County Veterans Advisory Board

• A Klickitat County Solid Waste advertising agreement with Gorge Country Media

• An appointment to the Open Space Advisory Committee