The Island County Fair Association said this week it won’t release public documents that may shed light on a controversial land sale, as well as detail donations to a private bank account the association has been tapping to fight the city of Langley over a road easement.

The association will also keep records of its meetings, including agendas and minutes, secret.

During the Island County Fair Association’s regular meeting Monday night in Coupeville, fair administrator Sandey Brandon said the public records issue has been turned over to attorney Judith Endejan, a media law specialist at the Seattle law firm of Graham & Dunn.

Endejan works for the same law firm as Elaine Spencer, who is representing the fair association in the condemnation lawsuit filed by the city of Langley. Langley has been seeking a strip of land across the county-owned fairgrounds so it can build a city street to lessen traffic in town.

The association’s responsibility on following state laws that guarantee public access to records took center stage earlier this month after critics of the association began asking fair officials to identify the donors who had given money to its court fight against the city of Langley.

The South Whidbey Record submitted requests to review the association’s records on donations late last month, and the newspaper noted that county regulations — and a 2003 letter from the state auditor to the county — say the association must abide by the state’s open public records laws.

Last week, Brandon refused to release the records and called the letter from the state auditor “erroneous.”

Brandon cast aside the relevance of the management letter at the fair association meeting on Jan. 5.

“The management letter is only one opinion,” she said.

Brandon said the organization is exempt from the law because the fair association existed as an independent organization before the county took over the fairgrounds.

“We’re not created by government,” Brandon said. “We’re not regulated by government. We’ve been doing this all by ourselves for a long time.”

Brandon said Endejan has been in contact with the state Auditor’s Office and the state Attorney General’s Office.

Association members, however, urged Brandon to clarify the situation quickly.

“It doesn’t do us a lick of good to have a big, fat question mark hanging over our heads,” said association president Diane Divelbess.

Not the first time

It’s not the first time the fair association has run into the issue of public transparency and accountability.

In 2003, access to fair records and fair meetings came under scrutiny when former association member Donna Woolmuth requested to review records after she had been denied the renewal of her pizza booth at the fair.

“I sent letters to the fair and the commissioners trying to get records – both ignored them,” Wollmuth said.

She hired an attorney who also sent letters, but she abandoned her efforts when the legal bills became too expensive.

Even though Woolmuth was an fair association member at the time, she was still denied access to the records even though members are allowed to view documents even under non-profit status.

“I tried for two years. There is so much wrong there,” she said.

The state Auditor’s Office said last week it hadn’t changed its opinion on the fair association’s responsibility to give the public access to its records.

Commissioner Mike Shelton said Tuesday the county was not discounting the auditor’s 2003 letter.

“Island County would never take the position that something the state auditor said is erroneous. We don’t believe that the state auditor is erroneous in their findings,” Shelton said.

At this week’s fair association meeting, members said many people – including some in the press, and the state Auditor’s Office – didn’t understand how the Island County Fair Board and the fair association have different members and different ways of operating.

The structure of the Island County Fair Association is set out in Island County Code, the set of regulations that cover everything from pet licenses to zoning rules.

The county code dictates that the association be guided by an 11-member board of directors, with three members directly appointed by the county commissioners.

The code also designates the fair association as the exclusive agency to run the fair, with the fair board sharing power with the county commissioners on the management and operation of the county fair. The fair board directly oversees the fair manager and the management and operation of the fair.

Land sale raised questions

Questions over the financial tracking of donations to the fair association have also been raised since a controversial land sale recently made headlines. The fair association sold 10 acres of land near Langley donated to the fair by the Waterman family for $120,000.

County regulations say the fair association is required to put donations to the fair in the “County Fair Fund,” an account controlled by Island County and subject to county oversight.

Island County Treasurer Linda Riffe said her office looked to see if money from the land sale was put into the County Fair Fund, but the search came up empty.

“We never saw the money. It does not appear anywhere in the books,” Riffe said.

The fair association has been criticized in the past for its handling of money.

Riffe was elected treasurer as a reform candidate in 2002. She replaced Maxine Sauter, who was the subject of repeated charges of mismanagement by the state.

After Riffe began to take steps to improve accountability over fair funds, however, she said commissioners decided to transfer oversight of the county’s fair funds to the county’s General Services Administration. The change came at the request of fair officials, Riffe said.

“The fair board was made up of the usuals. They were not happy when I took office, because that first year I was trying to clean things up,” she said.

“What I was trying to do was to get them to reconcile their books with the amount of money they were taking in and the amount of money that was going out,” Riffe recalled. She also said she pressed the fair association to put controls in place to safeguard cash.

Riffe said fair officials asked county commissioners for the change, and oversight of the county fair’s financials was turned over to county’s General Services Administration.

“My first reaction was, ‘Who’s trained? Who’s got the background to oversee that?’ That’s really a treasury responsibility,” she said.

Before the fair accounts were transferred out of her control, Riffe said she had begun to take steps to make improvements.

“I did meet with a couple of those folks and gave them some real simple reconciliation forms, and some training,” Riffe said.

She also said she made spot checks at the fairgrounds to make sure money was being properly handled.

“I had some concerns about how the tickets were being sold, and they couldn’t match the money to the number of tickets that were being sold,” she said.

Riffe said the steps were necessary because the state Auditor’s Office was concerned about the fair association’s handling of money.

The state was going to put its concerns as an audit “finding” that would have been made public with the release of the audit, but Riffe said Commissioner Mac McDowell asked auditors to keep its concerns about the fair association out of the audit.

The state did. It outlined its concerns in a November 2003 “management letter” to the county. In the letter, the state auditor said the fair association’s cash receipting system had a number of problems which could increase the risk of the loss or misappropriation of public funds.

The state said documentation was lacking on gate ticket receipts, and the county couldn’t determine if gate receipts were being properly accounted for, according to the letter. The state also said county monitoring and oversight of fair funds was lacking.

Land sale money set aside

At this week’s association meeting, one association member wanted to know if the money from the sale of the Waterman property had been spent. Brandon said it hasn’t, and that the fair association has money in certificates of deposit at Whidbey Island Bank and Key Bank.

The fair association has refused to release bank statements and other records related to the sale to The Record, however.

The sale is controversial, in part, because fair officials have repeatedly claimed in their fight with Langley over the road easement that the fair could not sell land to a private party without the approval of voters on the South End.

The deed to the donated land was given to Bryan and Onica Nichols, and Jeff and Erin Hanson, in January for $120,000.

Linda Perkins, then president of the fair association, and Marilyn Gabelein, secretary for association, signed the deed over in early January, 2006.

Perkins said Tuesday the association voted unanimously to sell the property.

“As far as I know, everything was done in accordance with the bylaws,” she said.

She said she could not recall if the association hired a real estate agent to handle the sale, or if the property was publicly listed or advertised before it was sold.

“I did not talk to a real estate agent personally,” she said.

In the documents on file with the title company, a real estate agent could not be found either.

Perkins also said the association talked to the Waterman family about selling the donated land before the sale went through.

Commissioner Shelton said he hasn’t had time to research the land sale.

He said the commissioners were not told about the land sale.

“We’ll certainly review it, no question about it,” he said.

“I don’t think the county ever envisioned, or did Mrs. Waterman intend to make a donation of that property to the county. She made it to the fair association for their use,” Shelton said. “Whether there are issues around the sale of that property, I can’t say.”

“Maybe there are issues, I don’t know,” he said.