Court dismisses most of suit against MLIRD

EPHRATA — A Grant County Superior Court judge has dismissed most of a long-running lawsuit by Moses Lake property owner Mick Hansen against the Moses Lake Irrigation and Rehabilitation District, or MLIRD.

In an eight-page ruling earlier this month, Judge David Estudillo rejected a suit filed in 2014 in which Hansen, a former member of the MLIRD board of directors, claims the District violated his constitutional rights and the U.S. and Washington state constitutions by granting two votes per parcel in board elections.

Hansen also claimed the board improperly assessed property within the district, a matter Estudillo did not entirely dismiss. Instead, the judge asked for additional briefings from Hansen and the district.

“We still have a hearing yet to go,” Hansen said. “For me, it doesn’t look all that great.”

Hansen said he hopes to get some kind of resolution on how property within the district is assessed. Currently, he said the MLIRD uses the entire value of a property to determine the assessment, while it might simply assess the land itself, because buildings don’t need irrigation water.

“They never answered that, but I don’t know if my attorney ever asked it,” Hansen said. “I’m still going to see if we can pursue it.”

Over more than five years, the lawsuit generated several thousand pages of documents filling five thick files.

MLIRD board Chairman Bill Bailey said the board and its attorney, Brian Iller, are still analyzing Estudillo’s decision.

“Further than that, I can’t say much,” Bailey said. “We’re just waiting.”

In addition to dismissing most of Hansen’s suit, Estudillo ruled — not just once, but twice during the more than five years this case was before him — that the MLIRD’s voting procedure of providing two ballots per parcel to landowners in the district was a clear violation of state laws governing irrigation district elections.

However, Estudillo also ruled that illegal procedure resulted in “votes more evenly distributed among all property owners.”

In irrigation district elections, only landowners are allowed to vote, and that includes corporations and fictitious entities. Washington state law creates different sets of voting rules for irrigation districts depending on the distribution of land among landowners in a district.

Under the applicable law, landowners in a district like the MLIRD are allowed two votes for every five acres (“or fraction thereof”) within the district. The goal, according to state law, is to ensure that no single landowner can cast more than 49 percent of the ballots in an irrigation district election.

According to the analysis done by Estudillo in his ruling, the MLIRD consists of 11,037 parcels totaling nearly 12,588 acres. Of the total, 211 landowners, or 3 percent of landowners living in the district, own 302 parcels of over five acres totaling 7,472 acres, or 59 percent of all the private land in the district.

The judge further noted that the remaining 7,646 landowners, or 97 percent, own 10,735 parcels under five acres totaling 5,116 acres, or 41 percent of the land in the MLIRD.

Had the MLIRD followed the applicable state law, the 211 largest landowners would have been allowed to cast 59 percent of the ballots in district elections. However, under the “two ballots per parcel” system approved by the MLIRD, those 211 landowners are only able to cast 604 ballots, or 3 percent of the total, in any MLIRD election.

By comparison, in last December’s MLIRD board election, only 781 ballots were cast.

(In irrigation districts where more than 50 percent of the land “is owned in individual ownerships of less than five acres,” each landowner is allowed two votes. Estudillo ruled, however, that statute does not apply to the MLIRD.)

In effect, while the voting procedure is illegal, it also distributes votes better and “does not violate constitutional rights,” according to Estudillo.

“This conclusion remains notwithstanding the District’s ‘Two votes for parcel’ voting scheme is unlawful,” he wrote.

Hansen said he is not certain he will appeal the ruling.“I don’t know what happens next. I don’t think I will appeal,” he said. “But I do want an answer on the land.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at [email protected].