Public Disclosure

The largest Public Disclosure Act lawsuit in Washington history goes to the State Supreme Court with oral arguments this week.

Armen Yousoufian was awarded over $100,000 in fines and attorneys fees against King County, which failed to satisfy his requests for documents pertaining to the publicly-funded construction of stadiums for the Seattle Seahawks and Mariners.

The pending appeal to the State Supreme Court petitions for a larger fine consistent with the Public Disclosure Act:

Any person who prevails against an agency in any action in the courts seeking the right to inspect or copy any public record or the right to receive a response to a public record request within a reasonable amount of time shall be awarded all costs, including reasonable attorney fees, incurred in connection with such legal action. In addition, it shall be within the discretion of the court to award such person an amount not less than five dollars and not to exceed one hundred dollars for each day that he was denied the right to inspect or copy said public record.

The lower court which ruled in Yousoufian's favor subtracted an arbitrary number of days from the calculation, based on the time from Yousoufian's request to the time he first filed a lawsuit. It also aggregated his requests for multiple records for penalty purposes and treated them as a single request. The Supreme Court appeal seeks to calculate the award based on the total number of days that the request was denied and also on the total number of records that were withheld.

There have been 13 amicus briefs filed in support of Yousoufian, including by the state's major newspaper associations. On the other hand, there were 2 amicus briefs supporting King County -- one by the Washington State Association of Municipal Attorneys and the other on behalf of the State of Washington, by Attorney General Christine Gregoire.

Gregoire's brief [large PDF] argues that any PDA request for multiple documents should be treated as a single request and refusal to divulge a large body of documents should be fined no differently than failure to release a single document. I disagree. King County, like many other government agencies, routinely refuses citizen requests for documents, on the assumption that few people will go to the trouble of pursuing an expensive and lawsuit. Trivializing the consequences to government officials for flouting the law appears to be a tacit way of permitting non-compliance with the Public Disclosure Act.

Christine Gregoire is not only the Attorney General, she is also the leading Democratic candidate to succeed Gary Locke as Governor. As a local business journal comments on Gregoire's brief:

Gregoire’s argument directly contradicts her statements on the importance of open government. She said the public, “...is entitled to pretty much any (government) document,” and that withholding documents makes people believe government is “hiding something.” At least we agree on that.
How can Gregoire make those statements and then argue a citizen disenfranchised by government’s denial of public documents doesn’t deserve the full penalties mandated by law?
Is this the kind of governor she’ll be?

More details on Armen Yousoufian's lawsuit on behalf of open and accountable government may be found on his personal website.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at February 16, 2004 12:40 PM