Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are those of the author alone and may not reflect the editorial position of ClarkCountyToday.com
A year ago, Vancouver Council Member Kim Harless faced an ethics complaint. What decided her case wasn't politics; it was the memo. City policy lets the attorney do only one thing at the first step: take the complaint at face value and ask whether, if true, it describes a violation. In Harless's case, an outside attorney did exactly that. She stayed inside the complaint, brought in no outside records, and found that Harless's conduct "arguably created an appearance of impropriety," even without an actual conflict. Council followed that guidance and voted 5-0 to send it to an investigator, about four weeks before Harless's election. Council Member Diana Perez voted yes.
Rob Anderson
That's how it typically goes. Elected officials rarely go against their legal guidance. So the memo is where the outcome gets decided.
I filed the ethics complaint against Council Member Perez, and her memo is the other half of this tale. Unlike the attorney in the Harless case, City Attorney Nena Cook didn't take my complaint at face value. She added nine pages of Secretary of State filings I never submitted, decided for herself where Perez's loan money came from, and never analyzed the appearance of impropriety in writing. Monday night she told council members she "reviewed all four pages and submitted additional pages." Council followed her memo and dismissed.
Here's what her memo ignored: the services.
No one disputes that Perez's business received help from Fourth Plain Forward. The memo itself says the café "received a construction loan from Fourth Plain Forward." Perez said on video, "Without Fourth Plain Forward, we would not have been able to be where we're at." FPF also gave the café's owners a $2,500 micro-grant in June 2025, before Perez became a co-owner, so she bought into a business FPF had already helped build.
Those services are exactly what the city pays for. Vancouver's $100,000 CDBG award to FPF, which Perez moved and voted for, funds "technical assistance providing businesses with access to services." FPF's contracts list "access to loans and other sources of capital" as one of those services. FPF Executive Director Paul Burgess told me directly that only about 25 percent goes out as grants. The rest stays with FPF to provide services like the ones Perez's business received.
My complaint was never about which bank account the loan came from. I never even questioned the loan's funding. It was always about a council member benefiting from services funded by an organization she votes to fund. My complaint said so plainly: FPF's "capacity to provide loans and technical assistance has been built and sustained in significant part by public funds, including city of Vancouver CDBG awards." It said FPF provided Perez "other assistance (including realtor referral)" beyond the loan, help she said was essential because she and her partners "could not assemble the resources alone," and that she "used a broker of FPF's choice to locate the business." The memo never refuted that. It simply ignored it. It also ignored that last month Perez voted on FPF's federal grant results without a word of disclosure, while Council Member Fox has stopped more than once to disclose her own Commerce ties.
The Harless memo said an arguable appearance was enough to investigate. The Perez memo says that if the money can't be traced dollar for dollar, there is nothing to see.
Apparently, a new standard for appearance of impropriety was just created. Under it, a councilmember can vote to fund an organization, partake of its services, keep silent, and call it ethical. That opens the door to blatant, unreported conflicts of interest. And the end result was council members pondering the idea of a moratorium on ethics complaints during election seasons. I wonder if they realize how insane that sounds, and how disconnected they are from the reality that they are supposed to serve the public, and the public has a right to hold them accountable, no matter what season it may be.
Did I mention that Council Member Ty Stober tried to make the outlandish analogy that what Perez did is similar to other council members walking their dogs in city parks they voted to create? Man, did we dodge a bullet with that guy not being our next county auditor.
I'm wondering if I should keep an eye on whether the city attorney will report the hours she spent as a campaign contribution to the Diana Perez campaign ... better not hold my breath.
Rob Anderson
Founder Reform Clark County
Host of Reformcast
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