A disagreement among Island County officials over the hiring of a consulting land-use attorney has echoes of a 15-year-old controversy.

Island County Prosecutor Greg Banks said he isn’t happy that the board of commissioners plan to hire outside counsel to help the county with its comprehensive plan update, a large and vital undertaking that is supposed to be completed in the next 18 months.

Banks said he, as the commissioners’ attorney, should have been consulted. Banks said he would have advised them that he and his two land-use attorneys should handle it.

He said doing so would not only avoid the expense of hiring outside counsel, but also give his staff the familiarization with the comprehensive plan that they may need sometime in the future.

“By going to an outside attorney, we won’t be able to develop the expertise we need in-house,” he said.

The commissioners said they weren’t trying to hide their plans from Banks and were surprised that he didn’t know about it. They said they want to work with someone with legal expertise in a very specific area of law and question whether his staff has time to dedicate to the project.

Commissioner Jill Johnson said the deputy prosecutors are relatively inexperienced and have to be “generalists” by the nature of their work, and the commissioners want “a specialist.”

Plus, she said, Banks consistently told the commissioners that his staff is “maxed out” and he can’t provide them with “strategic legal advice.”

“This isn’t about the prosecutor’s ego,” she said. “This is about getting the best product for the citizens.”

Controversy over the issue of using an outside attorney for comprehensive planning goes back to the 1990s. A former board of commissioners hired land-use attorney Keith Dearborn to help the county write its comprehensive plan as required by the Growth Management Act.

In 2000, the Superior Court judges forced the commissioners to stop using Dearborn as a land-use attorney when costs reached well beyond $700,000; the commissioners later hired him back as a planning consultant and paid him even more.

Banks said the product from the huge expense was “mixed at best,” with his office being left to “clean up the mess” when portions of the plan were appealed by Whidbey Environmental Action Network and others.

Litigation is continues to this day, he said.

WEAN spokesman Steve Erickson estimates about 70 percent of the challenges to the county’s comprehensive plan were successful.

In the recent process, Banks said he hoped there would have been more communication.

The issue wasn’t on the agenda, but commissioners discussed their plans to contract with the outside attorney during a meeting last week.

Commissioners said they planned to talk about the scope of work for the attorney at a meeting on Tuesday, even though the issue again isn’t on the agenda, according to Budget Director Elaine Marlow.

At the same time, Banks said, the commissioners couldn’t squeeze him onto the agenda until next week.

“I hope to have a discussion with the entire board as soon as possible at a public meeting,” he said. “The public and the elected officials should know what’s going on.”

Banks said he couldn’t find anything in the budget about an outside attorney for the comprehensive plan update. The commissioners also haven’t asked for bids from outside attorneys; county code requires competitive bids for service contracts of over $25,000, but that commissioners can waive that in a public session, he said.

In an email to Banks, Commissioner Helen Price Johnson said she is disappointed that he canceled two consecutive meetings with her to discuss the issue. She wrote that the planning director discussed the plans to hire an outside attorney with him.

“Upon receiving your memo on Friday, I again asked for some of your time today, but you have refused to speak with me either in person or on the phone,” she wrote. “I understand that you feel I should have reached out to you personally at an earlier date. I can’t change the past but do hope we can step forward in a professional way to address our mutual goals.”

“It is not in the best interest of the county for this to be confrontational,” she added.

Price Johnson explained that the 2014 budget includes $75,000 in the Planning Department for “technical legal assistance” related to the update. The amount was rolled into a $1 million earmark in this year’s budget for the comprehensive plan update.

Marlow said commissioners won’t know how much the legal counsel will cost until they determine the scope of work.

Ultimately, the commissioners and Banks disagree about whether his office can provide the necessary legal help in a timely manner.

Price Johnson argues that the prosecutor’s office “does not have such expertise in house.”

Banks countered that he has two attorneys with expertise in land use, but he asked for another paralegal to ease workflow and give the attorneys the time to dedicate to the update.

Banks is scheduled to address the commissioners March 18.