Public Disclosure
Recently, I’ve been reading about Washington’s set of public disclosure laws. Last year, in a 5-4 decision, the Washington Supreme Court ruled a request for all records to be overly broad. The request was obviously a fishing expedition by a group opposing the work of the agency and I can sympathize with the difficulty in responding to such a request. In fact, the request by itself would set back taxpayers enough to sink the mission of almost any agency in the current budget climate. Every document would have to be collected, logged, categorized, and reviewed. Just doing that around my room would take me a week – even without the computer files.
This year, the legislature responded by revising the law on public disclosure. The new law clearly states, “Agencies shall not deny a request for identifiable public records solely on the basis that the request is overbroad.” However, Justice Johnson made clear in his dissent that no changes to the underlying law were necessary; the statute as it stood should have withstood a request “to inspect all books, records, documents of every kind“. The court had relied, instead, on the word “identifiable” in front of “public records” the ruling was based on interpreting the word to mean identified in the request instead of identified by the agency. Whatever confusion that created is now over.
In addition to providing such clarity, the law adds a position of “Public Records Officer” to every agency. The idea is genius as it puts someone officially on the hook for conduct of the agency. The Attorney General’s office must also publish guidelines for public agencies. Overall, a very sensible set of changes. Still, I can’t help but feel like a request for every document could be a crippling request…
In even more recent news, The Prison Legal News finally won their long standing suit to learn the names of prison medical staff who had problems previous to or during their employment. The request also covered the names of those who complained of or received poor medical care from the Department of Corrections (DOC). The DOC put forth many arguments against releasing such information. Medical privacy, proper functioning of the prisons, and broad claims of the “law enforcement” exemption were all put forward by the Department. In the end, most of the claims were ruled implausible, improper, or within the DOC’s ability to control. Clearly Justice Saunders, who wrote the opinion which opened and closed with quotes from Thomas Jefferson, had the “interpret exemptions narrowly” clause close to his heart. Interestingly, Justice Johnson, who wrote a forceful dissent in favor of open records in Hangarten, voted against disclosure of the records to Prison Legal News. Since he didn’t write a separate dissent, it is impossible to try and find the precise thread of his logic.
Lord help us if someone requests all the public documents related to the perpetual University Physicians over-billing. (Actually, they’d probably be exempt under the “controversy” clause that protects documents which are likely to be part of a law suit and would not normally be part of pre-trial discovery.)
Comments
Commenting is closed for this article.