By Sue Forde for Citizen Review

May 13, 1998

Sequim, WA - On May 13, I drove out to the S’Klallam Tribal Center to check out the DRMT (Dungeness River Management Team) meeting. There were about 35 people there, mostly representatives of various state and federal agencies, the tribe, and Team members. A few of us were regular hard-working taxpaying folks who took time off work (the meeting starts at 3 p.m.) to see what’s going on in this prototype watershed council. (For those unaware, the state recently passed a bill calling for the establishment of watershed councils to determine how, where, when, why, etc. our water will be used - or not used. Clallam County and Chelan County have been the test pilot projects to see how the councils should be run, and to test the communities to see how they would be received.

A little background: The DRMT operates on a concensus-based decision making process. Consensus is not agreement; it is the absence of expressed disagreement. For instance, the hired facilitator, Bob Ness, was attempting to get the audience (that’s more - more on that later) to agree to the “ground rules” as established by the DRMT. Several of these ground rules included (cite some from Lois’ notes). One member of the audience raised the question as to who would determine whether these groundrules are being met - that they are very subjective, and therefore, could not agree to abide by them. Despite several members of the audience agreeing with that comment, Ness said,”well, these are the guidelines we going to use.” That’s consensus. There was no vote taken; he just decided since there was only a minimum of voiced dissent, that he was going forward anyway.

That bothered me. I was raised, and taught in my government class, that we have a country that has a government that is empowered by the consent of the governed. In other words, our Constitution provides for public policy to be enacted by elected representatives of those who are governed.

Which raised another question. Under Ground rule #8, the statement was made that the DRMT members “are expected to...speak for the interests of the constituents.” Since all but one of the members of the DRMT are unelected, appointed positions, I was curious about the use of the word “constituents”, which denotes people who have the voice because of their elected representatives. I raised my hand to inquire about this of the facilitator. He ignored me. I was persistent. I kept my hand up. He called on people who raised their hands long after I did; looked at me, but wouldn’t call on me. Hmpf, I thought, that’s not very nice. After 10 minutes, I lowered my hand and waited for another opportunity. It came, when he wanted to know if we would agree to abide by the ground rules. Up went my hand again. He finally acknowledged me, and I asked the question. “This word, constituent, denotes elected representation. How are these DRMT members elected, and who do they represent?”

Facilitator Ness paused, and Martha Ireland, our one elected representative (who by the way doesn’t even have a vote on the DRMT, as she chair) jumped in and said, “Sue, maybe I can answer that question for you.” She said something about the word constituent meaning something different in the state of Washington (get quote from tape). I asked her if the DRMT representatives, then, represented special interest groups. She said, If you want to say everyone at the table is a special interest group, you are welcome to say that.” So, as a constituent of Martha Ireland’s, I (and the majority of regular ?people like myself) are not being fairly represented, especially since Martha has no vote.

And then, the term “audience” bothered me, too. We, the people who were there to try and protect our interests (see water article), were the “audience.” I looked up the word in my dictionary when I got home, along with the word “constituent”, to make sure I understood the meaning. An audience’s job, basically, is to listen. Not participate, not vote. No wonder the DRMT meeting minutes exclude any and all comments from the public. Hmmmmm.