Offer in Hawkins suit still awaits reply

Almost a month has passed since the attorney for a citizen group suing Whitman County offered to drop a portion of the suit, and the county has yet to respond to the offer.

Timothy Esser, the Pullman attorney for the Organization to Void Illegal Conduct or OVIC, said his clients will drop a charge that commissioners violated the state’s open public meetings act if the county’s legal bills were paid by the developer for whom the county has pledged to build $15 million worth of infrastructure.

The open meetings violation is one of three arguments Esser outlined in the suit which asks the court t...