File Those Taxes
It’s funny to note the recent guily plea of Brian Borgelt the owner of Bull’s Eye, a firearms store in Tacoma. The store became infamous after the D.C. sniper claimed he had stolen the rifle used in those killings from the Tacoma store. Naturally, a regiment of federal civil officers decended on the store to review all of its paperwork. They found hundreds of guns had left the store without proper paperwork paperwork. For the past year, prosecutors have been trying to pin at least a few firearms charges on him with little success. Instead, he was charged through the traditional back door – failure to file a federal income returns. Brian did not file returns for the years 1993-2001. I’m glad he didn’t.
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.)
Journalism or Advocacy?
Thurston County Superior Court Judge Wickham recently ruled two interesting things about the finances behind Initiative 912. First, an email address is not sufficient disclosure even when it is the only identifier attached to the money. While this makes internet donations a little more cumbersome, I doubt it will deter the legitimate money. Second, the campaign must report the support of conservative talk-radio station KVI personalities Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson as an “in-kind” political contribution. Carlson was the Republican candidate for governor in 2000 and remains well connected within the party. (He is, for instance, on the exploratory committee for a 2006 Senate bid by Rob McGavin, the recently retired Safeco CEO.)
Dave Zeeck, in a recent op-ed in the Tacoma News-Tribune, thinks the second part went too far . He argues that the journalism practiced at KVI isn’t the same as the News-Tribune, but it is journalism as it was understood in the late-18th century. I don’t want to get involved in the large debate about the changing standards of journalism, but KVI seems never to get beyond the Opinion/Editorial section. I wonder how this will turn out.
Water Quality of Beaches
Yesterday, the Seattle Times wrote an article about the bacteria level at swimming beaches in the area. While the article focuses on how little is known and how inconsistent the quality standards are, there were a few paragraphs that jumped out to me as signalling lawsuit potential. If someone were ever to get sick swimming places the Times mentions, these paragraphs would be cited in the by the plaintiff’s lawyers:
But in Snohomish County, no one does check consistently. Yet, according to a handful of tests done by the state, Silver Lake was so polluted on several occasions last year that if it were located in some other counties, it would have been closed.
...
Silver Lake is one of a handful of Puget Sound swimming areas that show signs of chronic pollution that could send swimmers home with a bad case of diarrhea.
...
In Snohomish County, it’s been years since a beach was closed to swimming. But that’s not to say the water is unusually pristine.
In fact, a state study in 2004 found two lakes — Silver Lake and Lake Ballinger — with bacteria levels well above federal guidelines.
The county’s health district stopped routine monitoring of swimming beaches in 1999 because the tests were too costly and provided little useful information, said Bob Pekich, director of environmental health for Snohomish County’s health district.
“What does it tell you? I don’t know,” Pekich said of the problems with the tests. “We couldn’t even find complete and standard information on what threshold to use.”
Pekich said he wasn’t aware of problems at the two lakes.
Read the whole story and check out your beach.
AP Wire of Law Fixes
The Seattle P-I picked up the AP wire story listing the small, but interesting, law changes that came into effect this past weekend:
- Pregnancy no longer grounds for denial of divorce Last year, The Stranger made local and regional news by reporting on the reinstatement of a Spokane woman’s marriage. (Also worth a read is the follow-up story.) She had divorced her husband on what sounded like good cause and was carrying a child conceived with another man, but the judge revoked an earlier granted divorce on the basis of the pregnancy. The judge based his decision on rules governing parentage, namely the ease of assigning parentage to children born in wedlock. This law marks another in the proud history of laws passed to overturn judicial decisions.
- Vancouver to try “Instant Runoff” As part of the electoral reform that looks like it will take another several years to sort our, Vancouver will be allowed to try instant runoff elections for non-partisan offices. The instant runoff system, also called ranked choice, allows voters to rank the candidates in order of preference and therefore ends talk of “spoiler” candidates. I look forward to reading about the results of the experiment.
- A Strengthening of Public Disclosure More on this later.
- Liquor Now Available On Sunday Liquor stores are no longer closed by law on Sundays. Before you start planning your drinking around 7 day sales, though, please check with your local store. Very few of the state stores are planning on adding hours and the number of licensed stores doing so is unknown.
- Slander of a Woman Succintly, the AP reports, “The Legislature has removed a provision from law that makes it a crime to slander a woman.”
Socialists Prefer Not To Share
The Socialist Workers Party candidate for Mayor of Seattle, Chris Hoeppner, has been granted the right to shield the names of his donors from the public eye. (see story in the Seattle Times) My first instinct is to shrug – he’s not going to win anyway. I certainly don’t need a list of people who lost money at a casino last night; why do I need a list of people who gamble in local politics? I found two important responses:
- Protect workers against job action
It seems from a story at The Militant (a paper I’d never heard of before) that Chris is courting the unionized vote. Can’t say as I blame him since it seems a natural field for his party. However, the world of union workplaces is very messy. From my own experience, I could very well see someone being fired if their employer was nervous about a possible union and the employee’s named turned up on a donor list for the Socialist Workers Party.
- Promote disinformation efforts
Besides firing potential “troublemakers” a time honored strategy has been to create dissent within the ranks. Imagine the emergence of a Socialist Labor Party which causes dissent and arguing within the Socialist movement. Who would benefit? Anyone who opposed the movement. Employers used to create employer funded unions in a similar spirit, although that has since been forbidden. The secrecy surrounding the donor list allows for a company funded candidate to spread internal dissent.
My instincts tell me that the second possibilty is far more remote than the first so this is probably a good decision. Still, I find it a little disturbing that today’s Seattle still needs to worry about such pettiness.
Speak No Evil
Mitch Berger’s editorial, “Bitch SLAPPed Again?“, in this week’s Seattle Weekly, covers the efforts of two Puget Sound communities to close off discussion of certain topics at council meetings. Yelm doesn’t want to hear the word “moratorium” ever again in reference to big box stores and Pierce County council members don’t want their motivations questioned at meetings. Both restrictions on speech are a bit disturbing especially since these are appropriate issues to be discussing at such forums.
I can understand the Pierce County ban on attacking the individual council members. Heck, I’ve watched lots of such meetings and I’m tired of windbags standing up to make wild accusations too. BUT – courts have historically let decisions made by public officials stand even after the officials are in jail for taking bribes influencing those decisions. A recent case-study in such absurdity just hit a town in New Jersey (here’s a NYT article).
The ACLU is pressuring both governmental groups to step back, I’ll report back if I see anything more.
Calandrillo on <i>New London</i>
I finally took the time to dig out that piece I mistakeningly referred to as an Op-Ed a couple posts ago. Forgive my confusion, the actual text had been subscriber ($) only content. Instead, the story starts with the New York Times which published a letter from Prof. Calandrillo condemnng the US Supreme Court’s decision in the simple style such letters are forced to take. Spokseman-Review staff writer Bert Caldwell then wrote a column wrapped around a few sentances from Prof. Calandrillo, some from the letter and some from a brief interview. The piece ends with the comforting idea that Washington is safe from such improper use of eminent domain. I’m not so sure.
- “Your Private Castle, Gone Public”, letter by Steve Calandrillo, New York Times (June 25, 2005)
- “‘Public Use’ May Enter A New Domain”, column by Bert Caldwell, Spokane Spokesman-Review (July 7, 2005)
- My summary of a Washington Law Review article on eminent domain.
The Times Wins 9-0
Justice Chambers opened last Thursday’s decision in Hearst Communications v. Seattle Times Company with another lament about his current position:
We are asked to interpret the Joint Operating Agreement between the two daily metropolitan newspapers serving the greater Seattle area. We are told that our decision could lead to the closing of one of these newspapers. The advantages of having two great newspapers in our state’s largest city, each with an independent editorial and reportorial voice, are numerous and we do not address our task lightly. Our duty, however, is to interpret and apply the law.
The rest of the decision is fairly mundane. The court unanimously found that the force majeure clause – the part which dealt with strikes, terrorist attacks, etc. – is clearly distinct from the section which spells out in careful detail what constitutes a loss year for one of the two papers. The ruling allows the Times to claim both 2000 and 2001 as loss years which, when added to 2002, allow the Times to end the Joint Operating Agreement (JOA). Hearst Communications has stated that without the JOA the Post-Intelligencer may not survive. So today the future looks a little dimmer for the Post-Intelligencer, but this is just one battle is larger contract war. For a little more background, read The Stranger’s pre-decisions blog entry.
Public Disclosure Revisited
The Seattle Times has the following story today:
Public records battle grew from a father’s frustration“A rule that says you can’t have [the reports] if you know what you’re talking about just will not work,” Koenig’s attorney William Crittenden said.
Tomorrow it is in front of the Supreme Court. Here is to hoping that their decision is both clear and good, but most days I’d settle for clear in cases like these.