Public Non-disclosure

Armen Yousoufian e-mails this description of last week's oral arguments in the Washington Supreme Court trial of his public disclosure lawsuit against King County:

The county's attorney conceded virtually every issue, and at times there was open laughter and open snickering from the audience toward the King County senior prosecutor presenting the case for King County. It was a stunning display of admissions of gross negligence, the withholding of documents, bungling, lack of training, incompetence, etc. The King County prosecutor even volunteered that he thought the case merited higher fines. One Supreme Court Justice commented from the bench on how much the County's lawyer was agreeing with the case against his client! All of us who watched the display were in awe - the King County attorney acted like he had nowhere to hide, nowhere to run. He acted nervous and was poorly prepared.

Whether the county presents an effective defense or an inept defense in this case, either way it's a lousy use of the public's money.

More Non-Disclosure

In a different public disclosure case, this one regarding Gov. Locke's sweetheart deal with the Boeing Corporation, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation emailed last night:

At 5:29 p.m. this evening, two days before a public records court hearing and 15 hours before a legislative hearing to determine the supplemental Capitol budget, the state released details of a multi-million-dollar, 40,000-square-foot, taxpayer-funded employee training center for Boeing. The state will be required to pay all fees and costs associated with building, operating, maintaining, repairing, replacing and equipping the facility... Boeing “will have exclusive use of the ERC for at least five years” and will have first rights to use the facility in the years following if the company chooses

These details had been withheld by the governor's office for several weeks on the grounds that they were Boeing's "trade secrets", and more such "trade secrets" are still being withheld.

I feel obligated to mention that Attorney General and Democratic gubernatorial front-runner Christine Gregoire is arguing against full public disclosure in both of the above court cases.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at February 25, 2004 02:45 PM