Janice Louthan wants a promotion. She’s betting that Grays Harbor County voters feel she’s ready to be the next county clerk.

Her opponent, Kym Foster, thinks voters are ready for a substantial change.

The two candidates for Grays Harbor County Clerk recently sat with members of the Grays Harbor News Group’s Editorial Board.

Foster worked for the Grays Harbor County WSU Extension office as a nutrition educator for the past nine years and is obtaining a bachelor’s degree in organizational management from Grays Harbor College.

Louthan began work in the Clerk’s Office in 1990. The office handles the paperwork and files generated by the Superior Court. In 1993, she became the clerk’s compliance coordinator. Since 2002, she has worked as a deputy clerk, including as the chief deputy clerk, the role she currently holds.

“We work as a team and cover all the positions” in the Clerk’s Office, she said. “I can back up financial. I can back up reports. … Not everybody can do the compliance coordinator stuff.”

She says she’s ready to take over for her boss, Clerk Cheryl Brown.

Foster said she is, in part, motivated by questionable decisions from within the Clerk’s Office. In particular, she points to a case two years ago.

In September 2016, Brown became aware, through papers filed with her office (from the Prosecutor’s Office) of an arrest warrant for Adair Krack on charges of child molestation. Krack was the pastor at her church and was not aware that he was about to be arrested. Brown called a church elder and Krack found out about the pending arrest, which he was able to avoid for two days.

The Sheriff’s Office was livid, believing they were going to catch him by surprise. The warning gave Krack a chance to destroy evidence and would have put officers in danger if he resisted arrest, Sheriff Rick Scott said at the time.

Brown’s defense was that by the time she became aware of the warrant, and called the church elder, it was already public record. The problem, from law enforcement’s point of view, is that the go-ahead for them to serve the warrant did not reach them before news reached Krack.

Grays Harbor law enforcement and the FBI investigated the events. No charges were brought.

But Foster says the Clerk’s Office has lost the trust of Harborites.

“They willingly gave out that information,” she said. “People have to know that when they come into that office that their information is going to be private. And going to be held with the utmost respect and confidence.”

Louthan says she followed correct procedure and shouldn’t be held accountable for what Brown did. She also noted that the warrant was officially public record when Brown tipped off the church elder.

“I am not Cheryl. Cheryl is leaving, and I cannot answer for her,” Louthan said.

“Ethically … that was not handled correctly. And I had an opportunity; I did think about it. And I could have quit my job at that time. And I did approach her, and we did have a talk,” she said. “I did not agree with how she handled it. I did not like the way it was handled. And I could have made a choice at that time to tell her, I’m done. But I did not do that because my co-workers, my team, I believe, needed me. And I chose to stay there and support them.”

Louthan says she intends to make some changes in the way the office is run and points to one already under way that make some records available online to people who pay a subscription fee.

“Our Odyssey program is a system where once things are scanned in, they are immediately accessible (online) to folks with a subscription,” she said. “Eventually it will be available to everybody.”

But Foster believes change must come from outside the current administration.

“I went there, and I was a customer. It was cold, there was no greeting, no welcoming,” she said. “There are little things that I noticed when I walked in. It didn’t feel right. You go in there when getting a divorce or having a death in the family or all these terrible things. And you go into this room that wasn’t very welcoming. I think changing that experience would be nice. It doesn’t take much to give eye contact and reassure people that you’re going to help them.”

She also brought up a lack of required translation assistance, including the lack of documentation in other languages besides English, and she described how one man, who she said had been beaten, was turned away because he did not speak English.

“Why isn’t there a translation service provided?” Foster asked. “Why give her more time? It’s time to change. Let somebody new come in. I know it’s going to be a challenge, but I’m ready for it.”

But Louthan stresses that she is the one with the experience.

“I bring with me a lot of history and people need that. They need to know how to find what they need,” she said.

Campaign funding

A look at C-4 documents filed by both campaigns on Oct. 15 with the state Public Disclosure Commission shows very different approaches to campaigning.

Louthan is basically self-funding her efforts. She has donated more than $3,900 to her campaign and loaned it almost $6,000 more. Her coffers are $5,600 in debt.

Foster has raised more than $10,000 in cash and in-kind donations. She also has loaned her campaign about $3,600. Her campaign is almost $500 in the red.