The Kitsap County Public Health Board is moving forward with an expansion of the board to comply with a state law that goes into effect July 1.
The law, HB 1152, was signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee last May. Bill sponsor Rep. Marcus Riccelli, D-Spokane, told the Yakima Herald-Republic the bill was meant to address the politicization of the state's COVID-19 response, saying, “You want public health and science put forth, but what we saw was politics were infecting public health and science.”
Another aim of the bill, which requires an equal number of elected and non-elected members on health boards, was to get more community engagement, said Kitsap Public Health District Administrator Keith Grellner at the health board’s latest meeting earlier this month.
Prior to passage of the new law, most local health boards throughout the state were comprised of only elected officials, Grellner said. “There were a few that had some community members, but most were just electeds, which was pretty much what was spelled out in the original statute, RCW 70.05,” he said.
This organizational chart contrasts the health board's current structure, on the left, with the proposed structure compromising an equal number of elected and non-elected board members, on the right (Courtesy of Kitsap Public Health District)
In addition to requiring an equal number of elected and non-elected members, the law also requires representation from federally-recognized Indian tribes within the jurisdiction.
The non-tribal, non-elected members of the board must come from the following categories:
Health care
Consumer of public health
Community groups
The Washington State Board of Health is still creating the administrative code governing implementation of the new law, Grellner said. The state board held a hearing on April 13 to consider adopting the proposed administrative code.
Tribal representation for local health boards will be determined by the American Indian Health Commission, which the health district has already made contact with to get informed on their progress appointing board members from the county’s two main tribes, the Suquamish Tribe and the Port Gamble S'Klallam tribe, Grellner said. “They are hard at work doing that as we speak,” he said.
The requirements of the new law are “pretty proscriptive,” Grellner said.
“It requires that the county amend its enabling code if a health district such as ours was formed,” he said. “We will have to work with the county to amend Kitsap County Code Chapter 9.52.” The board is currently working with the county to do so, he said.
The new law will also require the health board to amend its bylaws, he added.
The health board and county must work together to recruit the new community board members, Grellner said. The health board is charged with conducting interviews, while the board of county commissioners is charged with approving and appointing the new members.
“We’ll be working together as we go through this process,” Grellner said, later adding, “And again, the local board of health will refer selections after the interviews are done to the board of county commissioners. And the commissioners approve and appoint the non-elected, nontribal members.”
The timeline for adhering to the new law is going to be tough to meet, Grellner said.
“The governor and the legislature did not do us any favors when they proposed this rule and passed the bill,” he said. “They put us under an extremely tight timeline while we were still in the middle of a pandemic that we hadn’t even seen the peak of. So, things aren’t moving along quite as much as we would have expected to have because of the pandemic, but we are making good progress.”
Grellner said the board should be close to making the July 1 deadline.
“But my recommendation to the board is we should do this right and make sure we get it right rather than rush through it because of timelines that … the local boards of health weren’t engaged with, weren’t asked for comment for the implementation date,” he said. “Again, I think we’ll be close. We’ll certainly have the new county code adopted more than likely, and the new board bylaws. We will certainly be into the interview process.
"And again," he continued, "if for some reason we didn’t have all the board members selected and appointed by July 1, I would remind the public and the board that we do not have an August meeting, so if we did make the July 1 deadline, we’re talking about only one board meeting where we might not be fully ready to welcome and embrace the new board members. But we may make it and that’s certainly what we’re going to try to do.”
The health district’s proposed health board reconfiguration to comply with the law would reduce the number of county commissioners on the board from three to one, while keeping the mayors of the four cities in the county — Bremerton, Poulsbo, Port Orchard and Bainbridge Island — in place.
To comply with the law, an equal number of non-elected members would be added — two tribal representatives appointed by the American Indian Health Commission, and three non-elected community members, one from each of the three categories highlighted in the law: health care, consumers of public health, and community members.
Kitsap Public Health Board member and Kitsap County commissioner Robert Gelder said the county is planning to amend the county code by its May 23 meeting.
