Governing bodies don’t change structure very often, but significant civic involvement or a growing population can push an entity to expand.
Such is the case in Bellingham, where the public and elected officials are mulling expanding the Port of Bellingham Commission from three to five seats. Out of the 75 port districts in Washington, only six port commissions have added members since the law changed in 1994 to expand commission membership. Expanded commissions include the Ports of Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Orcas, Edmonds and Anacortes.
This isn’t the first time Port of Bellingham commissioners have considered expanding the dais to include two more seats. Conversations concerning commission expansion seemingly pop up every few years.
Ken Bell, president of the Port of Bellingham Commission, said that during his two terms in office, commission expansion has been a constant drumbeat in the background.
“There’s always been someone who has discussed it annually,” he told Cascadia Daily News.
According to Washington state law, port commissions can expand several ways. One of the easier routes is for residents to vote on a proposition to increase the commission after a county reaches a population of 500,000.
The other two routes are a little more complicated. First, the port commission can adopt a resolution proposing to increase the commission’s size that registered voters then vote on. This happened most recently in 2022, when the Port of Olympia expanded its commission after it and the county created a joint resolution to expand.
In 2012, the Port of Bellingham Commission accepted a resolution written by Tip Johnson, a former city council member and co-founder of the Fairhaven Boat Works, now the Community Boating Center, to expand the commission from three to five. The three commissioners at the time, Scott Walker, Jim Jorgensen and Michael McAuley, unanimously accepted the ballot proposition language.
However, the vote to expand the Bellingham Port Commission narrowly failed 49.19% to 50.81% that November.
If the port commission is unwilling or unable to adopt a resolution to increase the size, then the voters can go out and get signatures to put the proposition on the ballot. This happened in Anacortes in 2002.
The process triggered a special election and on Sept. 17, 2002, the Port of Anacortes expanded from three commissioners to five in a 62% to 37% vote.
Kathy Pittis, a Port of Anacortes commissioner who worked for the port at the time of the expansion vote, said the Port of Anacortes districts cover a wide area in Skagit County — from as far south as Shelter Bay and La Conner to as far north as Point Williams. Guemes Island and Cypress Island are also included in the district.
“It’s very different, our demographics of who we represent,” she said. “For all the different lines of business we have, many people would think of Anacortes as a smaller community compared to the rest of the state but in relation to the rest of the state as far as ports, we are not a small port.”
The Port of Anacortes operates a marine terminal, an airport, does business with the Washington State ferry system and has one of the busiest marinas in the state.
But Pittis was quick to say no two ports are the same and each commission faces its own unique challenges.
Bell has been speaking with commissioners from ports that have expanded in size to fully understand the scope of the issue. He estimates he’s had around 35 conversations about it over the past few months.
“I need to understand the ramification [of expansion] so that I can be an advocate for or against it,” he said. “I’m going to take a position on it … This is one of those things that I think just needs settling at some point and I’m doing the homework now.”
He understands expansion could represent nuanced community voices across Whatcom County if the port were to break into five districts like the county council. Bell’s district encompasses portions of north Bellingham up to Lynden while Michael Shepard represents the downtown core and waterfront as well as Fairhaven and southeast Whatcom County. Bobby Briscoe represents northwest Bellingham up through Blaine, Point Roberts and Lummi Island.
“When you break them down into the small five districts that the county has now broken them into, you’ll also find that they’re very different neighborhoods with different concerns,” Bell said.
In a guest column to CDN, Shepard endorsed the idea of expanding the commission because the current structure isn’t ideal for outside collaboration. Because of the size, two commissioners meeting in a coffee shop could be considered a quorum and a violation of open meeting laws since the so-called run-in wasn’t scheduled ahead of time.
During the Sept. 17 Port of Bellingham Commission meeting, Commissioner Bobby Briscoe argued expanding the commission risks losing transparency.
“You go to five commissioners and you have no transparency with your commission, none,” he said, noting the same coffee shop scenario, where having five commissioners means two can legally meet outside of a public meeting to discuss items.
Bell believes the current commission has been very strict about not speaking with other commissioners except in formal meeting settings.
“I think it makes things a little bit more difficult, but it does make it more transparent because you don’t talk outside of the public comment out of the public setting,” he said.
Like Briscoe, he worries that with a five-person commission, work could be done behind the scenes to influence or sway other commissioners. (Any actual business conducted by the port, no matter its size, would still require a majority vote in open session.)
But Bell’s biggest hesitation with expanding the council is partisan politics.
The 1911 Port District Act that established ports in Washington was designed to keep ports independent of political parties and to keep the waterfront accessible to public economic development. Most ports in other states have commissioners appointed by either mayors or governors. Adding more commissioners could invite further political influence, Bell argues.
“I can’t stomach the idea that we would turn it into a political office and have political parties control the destiny of the port,” he said. “That would be a backward move in my world.”
Discussions to expand the port commission won’t happen in the immediate future. At the Sept. 17 meeting, Bell asked for a public discussion to be held later in December at the commission’s public meeting.
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the Port of Everett had five commissioners. It does not. The Port of Orcas has five commissioners. The story was updated to correct the error at 1:40 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 15. Cascadia Daily News regrets the error.
Annie Todd is CDN’s criminal justice/enterprise reporter; reach her at annietodd@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 130.