Gordon Forgey: Commissioners approve $15 million for Hawkins

Years ago, Gary Larson created a particularly memorable Far Side cartoon. It shows a child’s slide. At the bottom of the slide two tiny spiders look over the web they had spun across it.

One spider says to the other, “If this works, we’ll eat like kings.”

It is a picture right out of the Whitman County Courthouse.

County commissioners Greg Partch and Pat O’Neill have spun their web to capture the hotly debated Hawkins shopping center development at the state line outside Moscow.

One difference from the cartoon is that Partch and O’Neill have no doubts. The other difference is that their web costs $15 million of taxpayer money.

On Tuesday, Partch and O’Neill refused to hear from concerned citizens on the matter and voted to approve the $15 million deal. Earlier the two commissioners had ignored their attorney’s advice. They even refused to take heed from their bonding agent.

They are convinced that they have to support Hawkins for the sake of new business development in the county, regardless of the cost.

When the project was first proposed, the county committed $9 million to secure the deal. Then, it languished. Now, Hawkins, in a hurry to get started, asked for an additional $6 million from the county.

The county still has not received guarantees that the center will be finished and that tenants will fill the spaces. There certainly is no guarantee of the future success of the project or the stability of the tenants. Thus, expected tax revenues to pay off the county’s investment are sketchy at best. The commissioners are not even sure at this point from where their $15 million will come.

The slam-bam decision, originally planned for next week, left a bunch of concerned citizens furious over promising so much public money for a private development. Encouraging new business is one thing. This, they say, is excessive and imprudent.

Partch and O’Neill could not have handled the situation in a worse way. Besides alienating some potential allies, they have created rancor and distrust among others.

They should have answered some serious questions, and they should have addressed some important concerns. They should have listened. Instead, they rolled over to Hawkins’ demands and barged ahead, ignoring their own constituents.

It all makes the plan of Larson’s two spiders seem pretty reasonable.

Gordon Forgey

Publisher