The recent column by Bob Roegner regarding King County’s agreements with Federal Way and Auburn to preserve Public Health clinic services in those cities brings to mind the adage that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.

Unfortunately, the opinion columnist veers from his opinion and attempts to delve into fact gathering and reporting, based almost exclusively on anonymous sources.

One of the reasons the Society for Professional Journalists discourages the use of anonymous sources is that “the public is entitled to as much information as possible to judge the reliability and motivations of sources”(2014 Code of Ethics). For the general reader, most of Roegner’s facts in this column are difficult to evaluate because they are unattributed and unsourced.

Unfortunately, his “facts” are wrong in prominent places, I’d like to highlight:

1) Early on, Federal Way did reach out to multiple jurisdictions and stakeholders, not just to the school district, to begin discussions about how to address the regional challenge. It quickly became apparent that the immediate task was for each community to address the impending closure of its clinic.

2) The short-term challenge and the long-term issue were fundamentally separate issues. The short-term issue is that Federal Way and Auburn clinics were both set to close in January. Preventing the loss of service to 13,700 low-income women and their children in a few short months became the driving need.

In addition to the real human impact of a closure, the reality is that once those clinics closed it would have become much harder to open them again. Now that clinic services have been preserved, not only in Federal Way but also in Auburn and White Center, the county, cities and service providers can turn to the longer term challenges of preserving Public Health services across King County with sustainable funding and operational models.

3) Not only are the two clinics unique in the challenges and the associated costs, but the mayor and City Council of Federal Way have no legal or political authority to negotiate with King County on a building in Auburn that serves Auburn residents. There was no agreement for Federal Way to work towards keeping the Auburn clinic open in the short-term, because Federal Way couldn’t possibly make financial commitments on behalf of another city.

4) The city’s decision to allocate this $221,000 to save these services was a unanimous 7-0 decision at the City Council meeting, with no opposing discussion or concerns on the public record.

Aside from those facts, the city (and we think many in the community, as well) strongly differ with the columnist on a significant point of opinion. The winners on this issue were not any elected officials or even the dedicated Public hHealth nurses who will be able to continue to do their work.

The winners are the nearly 14,000 low-income women and children in Federal Way whose essential Public Health services are protected for another two years, while Federal Way, King County, Auburn and stakeholders around the county work toward a long-term regional solution.

Chris Carrel, Communications and Government Affairs coordinator