SPOKANE VALLEY, Wash. — Spokane Valley councilman Al Merkel is facing another investigation for alleged misconduct and violating city regulations.
Fellow councilmember Jessica Yaeger formally lodged a complaint about Merkel's behavior, accusing him of using a private Nextdoor account for city business, which is a violation of Washington's Public Records Act.
Yaeger is also accusing Merkel of blocking users and deleting posts on social media, which Yaeger says hinders transparency and public engagement.
"It is our duty to ensure that ALL citizens have access to his account and records are retained appropriately according to state statute. Mr. Merkel touts transparency in government, yet chooses not to comply," Yaeger said in a press release Thursday afternoon. "I'm tired of all of his excuses. We are trained on this and our oath of office requires adherence to the law in this manner. This blatant disregard for the rules sets the Spokane Valley up for a lawsuit and we cannot afford that, especially with the financial strains that we are under. The citizens of Spokane Valley deserve better than this. We have issues that need to be addressed for the public; his behavior and tactics put us behind and costs the citizens money."
Yaeger also said that use of the Nextdoor account "raises concerns about the potential misuse of Councilmember Merkel's account (should he comply) for political campaigns, further underscoring the urgency of addressing these issues."
Merkel released the following response to Yaeger's press release down below:
“Councilmember Yaeger has not exposed anything except that this is a continuation of a politically motivated attempt by the city staff and the council to distract the public from the issues that really matter.
This week, staff presented a proposed budget in which they suggested giving themselves raises, such that the average take-home pay across departments is now above $100,000 per year per FTE. At the same time, they proposed closing all the swimming pools in the city and halting local road maintenance. Interestingly, the total amount of staff raises was approximately the same as the cost to run the swimming pools. Both the pools and local street maintenance combined were less than the cost of the wasteful “Sprague Road Diet” currently being worked on in front of city hall. I proposed a separate budget that cuts $6 million from the city budget to use for pools, police, and local road maintenance, which the City Manager refused to distribute during the meeting. It is clear that this is an attempt to distract the public from these important developments.
For the record, nothing has changed about my Nextdoor account since January. During all the reporting about my Nextdoor account and city council meetings in which my account was discussed, council members and the city insisted that no one was trying to silence me or attack my Nextdoor account. The only change since then is that I have added the required disclaimer since it is a personal account. The same cannot be said about Councilmember Yaeger’s account or Mayor Haley’s account, which they have both used to comment on my posts or initiate their own posts about what CM Yaeger seems to be referring to as city business. This is another clear case of council members using rules they created to target me, a city administration that is obviously biased against me participating in that targeting, and both the City and the Council wasting your tax money to attack me. Instead of wasting time and taxes on these ridiculous and frivolous investigations, the other council members should think about using those funds to keep the pools open. It’s hard to claim poverty when The City is burning taxes on Sprague and frivolous investigations.
One more important note: despite adding an extensive section in the Governance Manual requiring council members to tell the truth in posting, Councilmember Yaeger’s ‘complaint’ does not allege that I have lied about anything on my account, which must indicate that CM Yaeger agrees with me that everything I have posted is the truth.”
This all comes more than a month after Merkel was cleared of legal wrongdoing in a separate investigation.
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