Many of you have probably received the latest mailing from the Coalition. I have had a slew of telephone calls and emails expressing disappointment at the lack of information in that document. Specifically people are concerned to see that they spent over $49,000 of your money and provided little other information to give any understanding of where they are spending the money. They did report that they spent $14,000 on the Moses Lake lawsuit but they did not elaborate on the expenses in prior years for this lawsuit or even report on whether they recovered any of those costs in the legal fee award from the court. That leaves $35,000 of expenses unexplained. There is simply not much in the way of transparency in their actions.

I guess this should come as no surprise. If fact it is a slightly better report than the last two years but that is not saying much.

It is interesting to note that Mike Rose, an active Spokane Fire Fighter has resigned from the Coalition. Mike is a member of the Spokane Pension Board and an officer in the LEOFF 1 Education Association. He was one of the more thoughtful and competent members of the Coalition. He left over a fundamental policy disagreement with the Coalition. He was replaced with two Klickitat County deputies, Tom Hawes, Retired and Rick McComas, Active. They now have eleven members and you and your organization have no say in who servers. It remains a private club that represents no one.

Included in their mailing was a return donation envelope. I strongly urge you not to send them any money. They do not need it and if you give it to them they will not tell you how they spend it.

I do give them credit for supporting the Moses Lake lawsuit. However the earlier Snohomish county lawsuit was funded by all of the organizations. That effort was lead by Ken Crowder and each organization donated directly. That is an example of leadership that is lacking in the Coalition. I remain convinced that should a need arise we can easily raise money from all of the organizations and individuals. We have done it before and can do it again. The kicker is that at this time no such need exists.

I applaud Dave Perry and Jerry Britt for taking a stab at writing articles for their report. It is an improvement over past issues but still, sadly lacking in content.

Finally I remain disappointed that the Coalition will not honor the position of the Retired Seattle Police Officers Association. When the RSPOA withdrew from the Coalition they specifically withdrew the permission for the Coalition to mail their members. Yet, in violation of their privacy, the Coalition continues to solicit those individuals. It remains as a glaring example of the Coalition’s disregard of the wishes of other members of the community. I guess that is a product of not representing anyone.