Al Merkel is being investigated again – for alleged misconduct

SPOKANE VALLEY, Wash. – Spokane Valley City Councilman Al Merkel is again under investigation for alleged misconduct and violation of city regulations.

Her council colleague Jessica Yaeger filed an official complaint against Merkel’s conduct, accusing him of using a private Nextdoor account for city matters, a violation of Washington State’s Public Records Act.

Yaeger also accuses Merkel of blocking users and deleting posts on social media, which Yaeger says hinders transparency and public engagement.

“It is our duty to ensure ALL citizens have access to his account and the data is properly maintained in accordance with state law. Mr. Merkel touts transparency in government but does not adhere to it,” Yaeger said in a press release Thursday afternoon. “I am tired of his excuses. We are trained to do this and our oath of office requires that we follow the law in this way. This blatant disregard for the rules exposes Spokane Valley to a lawsuit and we cannot afford that, especially given the financial strains we are under. The citizens of Spokane Valley deserve better. We have problems that need to be solved for the public; his behavior and tactics are putting us behind and costing citizens money.”

Yaeger also said that the use of the Nextdoor account “raises concerns about the potential misuse of Council Member Merkel’s account (should he comply with the request) for political campaigning, further underscoring the urgency of resolving these issues.”

Merkel issued the following response to Yaeger’s press release below:

“Councilmember Yaeger has disclosed nothing except that this is a continuation of a politically motivated attempt by the City Administration and Council to distract the public from the truly important issues.

This week, staff presented a budget proposal in which they proposed giving themselves raises so that the average take-home pay of all departments is now over $100,000 per year per full-time position. At the same time, they proposed closing all swimming pools in the city and stopping maintenance of local streets. Interestingly, the total amount of raises was roughly equal to the cost of running the pools. Both the cost of the pools and local street maintenance combined were less than the cost of the wasteful “Sprague Road Diet” currently being worked on outside City Hall. I proposed a separate budget proposal that cuts $6 million from the city budget to be used for swimming pools, police and maintenance of local streets. However, the City Manager refused to distribute this budget proposal during the meeting. It is clear that this is an attempt to distract the public from these important developments.

For completeness, nothing has changed about my Nextdoor account since January. Throughout the coverage of my Nextdoor account and the City Council meetings where my account was discussed, Council members and the City insisted that no one was trying to silence me or attack my Nextdoor account. The only change since then is that I added the required disclaimer because it is a personal account. The same cannot be said about Council Member Yaeger’s or Mayor Haley’s account, both of which have used it to comment on my posts or initiate posts of their own on what CM Yaeger appears to call City business. This is another clear case of Council members using rules they created to target me, a City administration that is blatantly biased against me participating in these attacks, and both the City and Council wasting your tax money to attack me. Instead of wasting time and taxes on these ridiculous and frivolous investigations, the other council members should think about using those funds to keep the pools open. It’s hard to feign poverty when the city is burning taxes on Sprague and frivolous investigations.

One more important note: Although a detailed section has been added to the Governance Manual requiring Council Members to tell the truth in their posts, Council Member Yaeger’s ‘complaint’ does not allege that I lied about anything on my account, which would seem to indicate that CM Yaeger agrees with me that everything I posted is true.”

This all happened more than a month after Merkel was cleared of any legal wrongdoing in a separate investigation.

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