Who Wants To Know?

There has been an interesting story coming out of our neighbor to the north recently. Evidently, Lakewood is grappling with an issue that pits the philosophical against the practical in how they support citizen information requests.

Public records pest no excuse to limit access

THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Published: 01/05/10 12:05 am

To dissuade a local man from making a nuisance of himself, the City of Lakewood wants the Legislature to change the rules for everyone in the state.

Fredric Cornell files public records requests – lots of them. As of late October, the Lakewood gadfly had filed 501 of the 891 requests received by the city in 2009. The city claims it spent nearly $16,000 of staff time and expenses answering Cornell’s requests.

What really galls city officials about Cornell’s requests is not just the volume, but that he doesn’t pay anything to inspect the thousands of records that city officials dig up for him.

Lakewood’s beef really is with the state public records act, which allows cities to charge only when someone takes a copy of a public record home with them. There’s a method to what the city claims is madness: Government documents exist because the public underwrote their creation; to charge members of the public to view the records that belong to them is tantamount to double taxation.

But the Association of Washington Cities apparently sees an opening in Lakewood’s travails. The association is working on legislation that would set a higher bar – and possibly higher fees – for frequent users of the state’s open records law.

Hard cases make bad law, and this one is a doozy. Cornell is no typical, taxpaying requestor, Lakewood officials say. He has a criminal history of theft and failing to report for sexual deviancy treatment, according to the city’s spokesman, Jeff Brewster, who wrote a letter to the editor to explain how “bizarrely” Cornell acts.

But what of that – or the fact that Cornell shows up to council meetings wearing a priest’s collar? Nothing in his background or his wardrobe precludes Cornell from requesting public records. He has the same right as anyone to ask to see a city employee’s expense voucher or public officials’ e-mail exchanges.

If Lakewood wants to talk about records, then let’s talk about its own. What about that $40,000 a Pierce County judge ordered it the city to pay in 2008 after finding that the city had improperly and negligently handled the request of a Federal Way man seeking records related to the arrest of a Seattle police officer in a prostitution sting? Now there’s a background with some relevance to the subject at hand.

Lakewood seems to be betting that limits on public disclosure will go down better with a chaser of creepy-guy antidote. Fredric Cornell may make a sorry poster child for open government, but Fredric Cornell is not the point.

The point is that in a state where all records are presumed open, how does anyone define what constitutes an “excessive” request to see them?

Lakewood officials say to beware of the true costs of unfettered public disclosure.

We say beware the true costs of losing it.

At first glance you may think what nut-job would file so many information requests and what would he do with all of that data? I guess from my perspective, I cannot fathom who has that luxury of time to pour over these documents.

I guess none of that matters because the pernicious response from the city of Lakewood piques a whole other set of interests, most particularly, why are they being so defensive? Frankly, I do not buy their assertion that staff time and cost are the primary drivers of their response.

The problem is Lakewood has no frame of reference as to what “reasonable” is. What is a reasonable amount of requests? Who knows? I guess it depends on what issues are at play and who is involved. At the end of the day, public information is, well, public. It really doesn’t matter if ten people made 100% or the information requests or one thousand people made the same information requests. They all have to be filled.

In the article, we hear that familiar refrain that the city cannot afford the staff time. To that I say boo hoo! What you are really are witnessing is the slow plodding of government struggling to keep up with technology. Since state law says that a requestor only has to pay for copies of documents they walk away with it doesn’t address the time it takes to collect that data to make available.

Too effing bad.

Technology makes generating data fast, easier than ever. So fast, we tend to generate more useless data. However, this same technology also allows faster archiving and retrieval–just not for the public. There is the rub. How do you automate, or at least facilitate the public access to this data? Lakewood obviously hasn’t figured this out yet (nor has DuPont, I suspect).

It also doesn’t seem like the city of Lakewood is too anxious to figure out a citizen-centric solution either. As mentioned in the article, they have resorted to their old playbook. The playbook that says when you are beaten then change the rules (law) so that you win. For this, they have employed their hired henchmen at the Association of Washington Cities (AWC) to do their dirty work.

The AWC is nothing more than a lobbying juggernaut that represents the 281 cities in this state to our legislature. Note that representing the interests of Washington cities does not mean they are representing the interests of Washington residents. After reading the AWC website I cannot help but get the feeling that they are modeled after a labor union:

Membership is voluntary. However, AWC consistently maintains 100% participation from Washington’s 281 cities and towns. A 24-member Board of Directors oversees the association’s activities.

And yes, there are dues involved.

The actions of both Lakewood and the AWC in this matter are nothing short of despicable.

Citizen involvement is a two edged sword. At the end of the day, they want you to participate but only on their terms. Cities pay lip service to transparency but don’t want to show you everything. Sometimes for good reason; mostly for not.

What I found interesting in reading the editorials, letters to the editor, and comments to both, center on the request for e-mail and phone records. A couple years ago, the city of Detroit had their mayor jailed of his text messages to his chief of staff/mistress. It wasn’t their sordid affair that was his political downfall but rather the evidence of the illegal firing of a couple high ranking police officials acting as whistleblowers.

That should serve as a wake up call to municipalities all over America that those city issued blackberries and e-mail accounts are not private. All it takes is a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by a citizen or newspaper, and much like pulling on an errant string of a sweater, it all becomes plain to see for the citizen.

Last year, Mayor Jenkins mentioned that one of the projects for 2010 will be the establishment of a communication policy for the city of DuPont. Perhaps the example of the story from Lakewood would suggest that her scope is too narrow and should include document archiving and retrieval also.

After all, if you make a pledge to transparency in government then you better be prepared to open your kimono for all to see.

Yes, that is really chicken!