Gov. Jay Inslee will decide who fills a vacancy on the Clark County Council after the current council members deadlocked in a vote to select a person to represent District 5.
During a March 29 meeting, the council interviewed three people who applied to fill the District 5 seat formerly occupied by Eileen Quiring O’Brien, who stepped down from her position on March 1. Quiring O’Brien formerly served as the council chair before voters approved a change to the county charter that created a fifth council district, which went into effect this year.
The candidates include Dick Rylander, a pharmaceutical executive from Battle Ground; Thomas Schenk, a former criminal investigator and U.S. Customs Service special agent from Yacolt; and Peter Silliman, a telecommunications business owner from La Center.
In a 2-2 vote, Councilor Gary Medvigy moved and voted to approve the appointment of Rylander, alongside Clark County Council Chair Karen Bowerman. Councilors Temple Lentz and Julie Olson voted against the appointment.
Medvigy said Rylander is “very articulate” and “very well invested in this county.”
Medvigy also noted the position needs to be filled in order for the council to function well and said the district, which covers north Clark County, needs representation on the council.
“It’s important and incumbent upon us to have a full council,” Medvigy said.
Lentz said she was concerned by responses from all of the candidates on questions that ranged from how to manage the county’s structural deficit to how they would work with people from diverse backgrounds in the county.
“It’s our responsibility to vote according to how we feel we can best represent our constituency, and at this moment I’m not able to support this (vote),” Lentz said.
Olson specifically pointed to responses from the three candidates about the role of the council as the Clark County Board of Health. In that capacity, the board “exercises final authority” to enforce state public health statutes and enact local rules for public health, among other responsibilities, according to information from the county.
Two of the three candidates touched on the pushback the board of health and Clark County Public Health have received during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rylander mentioned comments both on the health department’s social media account and in testimony at county meetings, which questioned data provided from the county’s official sources.
“That would be something that given my background I would like to look at more closely to determine whether the information that has been presented and shared is indeed accurate and complete, or subject to additional interpretation,” Rylander said.
Rylander, who mentioned his decades of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, said he has seen incidences when treatments were used not according to their label, and ended up being approved for those ailments later on. Although Rylander doesn’t believe the county should outright condone off-label use, he said more information on those options should be made available.
Rylander estimated that between 25 to 30% of the county’s population has questioned or challenged the measures that were taken during public health emergencies like the 2019 measles outbreak, and more recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic. He wants the public health department to share more information on alternative therapies, some of which are not approved, so a “schism” isn’t created between the department and members of the community.
“The requests for second opinions occur with some regularity in medicine, particularly when we have heavy-duty health situations,” Rylander said.
Schenk said he doesn’t agree with some of the messaging from the county about vaccine safety. He said documentation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shows the vaccine “is not necessarily safe and effective depending on who you are,” pointing to “a lot of adverse reactions and some deaths” in that documentation.
“Whether it’s all attributable to the vaccine, I don’t know,” Schenk said.
Schenk said he isn’t outright against vaccines, but noted he has concerns about COVID-19 vaccinations being “experimental.”
“I am not an anti-vaxxer. My kids were all vaccinated. I think that’s important,” Schenk said. “It’s helped us get rid of polio (and) any number of other diseases.”
The FDA has given full approval for both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.
Peter Silliman didn’t offer opinions on data, treatments or vaccine risks. He said the role of the state-mandated Board of Health is to oversee the operation of the health department.
“You’re supposed to be the oversight for the county medical officer, making sure that they are making decisions that balance out the needs of public health and public policy with the needs of private individuals,” Silliman said.
Following the stall to appoint Rylander, Medvigy moved to forward the names of the three candidates to the governor’s office, a measure which passed unanimously.
“It appears that we have a deadlock — which unfortunately we may see replicated over and over and over again — in every issue that comes before us in order to take action until we get a fifth councilor,” Medvigy said.
According to the Revised Code of Washington, if the council does not appoint a replacement 60 days after the vacancy, “the governor shall within (30) days thereafter, and from the list of nominees provided for in this section, appoint someone to fill the vacancy,” according to the Revised Code of Washington.
Since the vacancy went into effect on March 1, that means Inslee could appoint one of the three candidates as soon as May 1.
