State Supreme Court reaffirms Seattle port commissioner recall

State Supreme Court reaffirms Seattle port commissioner recall The Washington state Supreme Court ruled Friday to deny a motion by Port of Seattle commissioner Pat Davis requesting the court to reverse its earlier decision to allow a recall effort against Davis.
   The court's terse one-sentence ruling ends what may be the last hurdle before activist Chris Clifford can move forward with his attempt to put Davis' tenure to the voters. Court officials said Davis has no further legal appeal at the state level.
   Clifford told the Seattle Times he now plans to finalize the petition language. Once King County officials approve the petition, Clifford will have six months to collect more than 150,000 signatures.
   Davis, who said she would retire after her current term ends next year, was seeking to have the court reverse its unanimous ruling in August that Clifford had legal standing to move forward with the recall.
   Clifford plans to ask voters to decide whether Davis committed malfeasance in her handling of a memo granting former port Chief Executive Officer Mic Dinsmore about $239,000 in after-retirement salary. Davis, a 13-year veteran of the board, signed the memo authorizing the payment on her own, and the salary agreement was not voted on or approved by the rest of the port board. The full board eventually rescinded the salary authorization to Dinsmore.
   The state Supreme Court's August ruling said the recall petition is 'legally sufficient in charging Commissioner Davis with an act of malfeasance' over her signing of the memo.
   In the original case before the state court, Davis argued the port commission's April 24 public vote rescinding the Dinsmore memo effectively 'cured' any harm her action had created.
   In the unanimous ruling, the court turned Davis' argument against her, finding that the recall petition's malfeasance charge 'is supported by the record and demonstrated by the fact that the port commission had to hold a public meeting in order to undo Comm. Davis’s contract with Dinsmore.'
   Davis filed her request asking the court to reconsider in September. The filing argued that the court failed to specify a specific violation of the law when it affirmed the malfeasance charge.