An angry exchange between Councilmembers Gene Cerino and Virginia Haugen after Monday's meeting provoked a testy confrontation between Haugen and two other council members outside the Mayor's office.

Haugen had just accused Cerino of publicly questioning at a June 11 Auburn Area Chamber of Commerce dinner whether she had ever been a partner in her former husband's business.

Cerino said he had only questioned the mayoral candidate's competence to run a city of 67,000 and denied making any remarks about her resume.

Insisting that Cerino had "basically called me a liar," Haugen warned him that "you keep screwing around and you're going to get the wrath of my kid in your face."

Lynn Norman stepped in to calm a furious Haugen.

"It's difficult to have Gene call me a liar in front of my friends," Haugen said.

"But Virginia, that's what you do," Norman responded. "You call us crooks and liars every chance you get. It's the same behavior that you give to us. Do you think we like being called crooks?"

Haugen choked up and said she only had nice things to say about Norman and Nancy Backus.

Backus reminded Haugen of some contradictory public comments.

"We've seen what you said, we heard what you said," Backus replied. "You talk about people at City Hall being crooks. We are part of City Hall. We are not crooks."

Backus critiqued Haugen's lack of preparation for the Council meetings, which Backus had earlier said was "disrespectful" to her fellow council members.

"We take our jobs very seriously. We come prepared to the Council meetings. We've read the material." Backus said. "We don't ask questions about how much this or that is going to cost us because we've read the material, and the budget is right in there. Had you read the material you would have known that."

Haugen then turned to "horrendous mistakes in planning" she claimed the city had made in the last 30 years.

Norman said the City had based its decisions on downtown planning on two studies, both of them heavily dependent on citizen input.

Haugen said she had read both studies, said she had had two unnamed land-use lawyers in Seattle review hundreds of dollars worth of documents and claimed they had caught Mayor Pete Lewis lying twice in a meeting.

"Now I'm not calling you two crooks, no, you're not crooks," Haugen said.

"Virginia," Backus said, "you called people at City Hall crooks, it was on the front page of the (Auburn Reporter), you called everyone at City Hall a crook."

"I didn't call you crooks," Haugen said. "I think you've made horrendous mistakes, and you are yes men. You say 'yes' to everything that Pete wants."

"Don't you dare call me a yes man!," Backus said.

"When did you vote no last, Nancy?" Haugen asked.

"If I disagree with something, I'll vote no on it," Backus said.

Norman said most of the no votes occur in committees in advance of the Council meetings, meaning that many items never make it out of committee.

"…I stopped you, Virginia, to tell you to calm down and not confront Gene that way. You threatened him. And there were witnesses to that," Norman said. "It's not appropriate to discuss that and get so upset. He just told you that he didn't believe you had the qualifications to run a City this size, and he said that he didn't have the qualifications either."

"I know what he said," said Haugen. "He said it for about 15 minutes, and I sat there and listened to it. We were at a social event, and my daughter was with me. I didn't appreciate it. He basically said I was lying about my resume. He should have left me alone," Haugen said.

Backus accused Haugen of grandstanding at the Council meetings.

"We're all tired of leaving you alone. We're tired of you thinking it's your stage in there," Backus said.

Contact Auburn Reporter News reporter Robert Whale at rwhale@auburn-reporter.com or 253-833-0218, ext. 5052.

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