Health district suit still on

Wasco County is asking that the suit in its entirety be dropped – a standard motion in such cases – and also that the three county commissioners as individuals be dropped from the suit.

The two sides have also filed documents with opposing interpretation of a portion of state law dealing with whether the commissioners are required to individually be responsible for attorney’s fees. Wood contends the law allows it and the county disagrees.

The county has also filed motions asking that the three commissioners, Scott Hege, Rod Runyon and Steve Kramer, either not be required to go through the deposition process until the motion to drop the suit has been heard, or that Wood deposit $25,000 with the county to cover anticipated expenses of his “unreasonable discovery requests,” a county-filed court paper stated.

Wood has also asked for all communications between the three commissioners from January 2013 to the present.

Wood sued Feb. 13, claiming the county commission’s Dec. 17 vote to leave the North Central Public Health District in a year’s time was improper because the matter was not on the meeting agenda.

The commission revisited the matter Feb. 18, and at a well-attended meeting, rescinded its Dec. 17 vote. It said it would continue to evaluate the provision of public health services, and if it ultimately wanted to leave the health district and form a county public health department, it could vote to do so by Dec. 31, 2015. Withdrawal from the health district would be effective July 1, 2016.

In court papers, Wood contends commissioners violated public meeting rules by substantively discussing, via email, plans to withdraw from the health district before the Dec. 17 meeting. Emails showed they had lined up a volunteer to help them with the withdrawal process several days before Dec. 17.

Wood is asking that the commissioners admit they communicated with each other outside of commission meetings about the health district and that they anticipated, more than 24 hours before the Dec. 17 commission meeting, that exiting the health district would be a matter of consideration at the meeting.

The county contends rescinding the Dec. 17 vote makes the lawsuit moot and has asked that it be dismissed.

The county filed a motion to disqualify Wasco County Circuit Court Judge John Wolf, since his wife works in the district attorney’s office, and Wasco County District Attorney Eric Nisley is set to be deposed in the case.

Peachey earlier said he would be surprised if either of Wasco County’s resident judges, Wolf and Janet Stauffer, would end up hearing the case because “this will involve many people at the courthouse.”

On attorney’s fees, Wood cites a state law to justify seeking those fees from both the county and individual commissioners. The county cites the same state law to contend individual commissioners are not required to pay out to Wood if the county loses the case. Rather, the county contends if it loses, the county could then go after individual commissioners to share the costs of attorney’s fees.

Peachey said his attorney’s fees now stand, conservatively, around $10,000.

Wood is also contesting the county’s demand that he deposit with the county $25,000 to cover the cost of depositions and retrieving documents.

He said it was counter to normal practice and would have a chilling effect on requests in the future.

The county contends the scope of the discovery request is onerous and it should not have to comply, and Wood says the request is standard and the county is attempting to resist legitimate attempts to get information.

The two sides also differed over whether one side can be made to pay the other side’s deposition costs.

Peachey and the county’s attorney, Brad Timmons, said the motions filed so far are typical of what is filed in civil cases.

On costs, the county said an earlier discovery request from Peachey covered 350 pages of emails.

The county initially estimated it would cost $600 to $700 to review the emails, but the county’s attorney ended up spending 15 hours – at a cost of $3,000 – to review the records to ensure they were complete and didn’t contain privileged information.

Timmons said in a court filing that the county has not been paid for those documents or the cost to vet them.

In a court document opposing Wood’s request for commissioner communications going back to 2013, Timmons said it would likely be “thousands” of pages and was “a fishing expedition seeking to embarrass, harass and unduly burden” the county and commissioners.

He estimated it would take an attorney 100 hours – at a cost of $25,000 – to vet that large amount of emails.

Timmons added that when the county told Peachey that it would seek to block release of the information without the $25,000 prepayment, “defendant attempted to circumvent the court’s ruling in this motion by submitting a public records request for the same documents.”