MOUNT VERNON, WA - Sept. 8, 2001 -- Another legal showdown is looming over the future of a breakaway government that calls itself Freedom County.

A hearing has been scheduled for Thursday in Skagit County Superior Court.

Freedom County backers are urging a judge to rule in favor of their longstanding claims that they legally severed ties with Snohomish County in 1995.

Meanwhile, attorneys for Snohomish County and the State Attorney General's office are urging the judge to not only dismiss Freedom County backers' arguments, but also to hit them with legal sanctions, including attorney fees, for continuing to press claims that have repeatedly been rejected by the courts.

It is time to "recoup the public expense of having to continually litigate this," Snohomish County civil deputy prosecutor Gordon Sivley said this week.

"We are confident that it takes more than just submitting a stack of petition signatures to create a county," he said.

Freedom County's purported boundaries encompass about 1,000 square miles, nearly half of Snohomish County's area. Supporters contend the new county has existed since April 1995, when they presented the Legislature with more than 12,000 signatures calling for its creation.

But the state Court of Appeals and the state Supreme Court repeatedly ruled that Freedom County does not exist. A federal lawsuit brought by Freedom County proponents also was tossed out of court.

The state Supreme Court in February 1998 ruled in the case of a proposed breakaway group in King County that the mere act of gathering signatures on petitions does not create a new county. Still, none of the earlier cases squarely addressed the legal issues raised in the latest Freedom County lawsuit, Tim Robbins, an attorney hired by group, argued in court papers.

Freedom County backers assert that they've met all the requirements for creating new counties as outlined in the state constitution and that they've been harmed by the failure of state legislators and others to recognize the new county's existence.

How new counties are formed is an important issue "to a substantial population of people residing in Washington state, from the wheat fields of Eastern Washington to the hinterlands of our many urbanized counties with significant rural populations," Robbins wrote.

Sivley contends Freedom County backers aren't arguing undecided legal issues, but instead seeking "recognition for their mythical county by judicial decree."

Rulings in the earlier cases legally block Freedom County from arguing the same issues again, the deputy prosecutor said in court papers.

"The filing of this action was an abuse of legal process by plaintiffs, serving no purpose except to harass Snohomish County officials and to force needless costs upon the taxpayers of Snohomish County in responding to it," he wrote.

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