Legality concerns, agent's exit delay

Whitman County commissioners delayed a decision Tuesday on increasing the county’s contribution to help build a shopping center at the stateline.

In the week since Hawkins Companies asked for an additional $5.9 million to build public infrastructure at its long-proposed 714,000-square-foot shopping center, commissioners learned their bonding company would not underwrite bonds on the project and Prosecutor Denis Tracy advised them he had concerns about the legality of the proposal.

“I guess we’ll see what we can put together over the next week,” Commissioner Greg Partch said before canceling a...