From Stark

Via Facebook, I have noticed quite a bit of sarcastic commentary on the theme that, while police disrupt Occupy encampments with pepper spray, encampments of shoppers at store openings are left in peace.

Perhaps police departments around the nation were stung by this criticism.  Today, law enforcement agencies battled would-be Air Jordan purchasers at retail outlets in a number of locations, including Tukwila–where pepper spray was used. USA Today reports.

From Stark

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, in this report, says that the overall U.S. prison population declined in 2010 for the first time since 1972.

The figures include both state and federal prison populations. While the federal prison population continued its rise in 2010, the drop in the state prison population more than made up for that.

The bureau says the prison population was 1,605,127 at the end of 2010.

Also, the number of people released from prison in 2010  exceeded prison admissions for the first time since the agency began compiling these statistics in 1977.

On a per capita basis, the U.S. prison population has been declining since 2007, when it peaked at 506 per 100,000. For 2010, 497 out of every 100,000 Americans got their mail at a state or federal prison.

The Justice Policy Institute identifies itself as a research and policy organization devoted to promoting alternatives to prison time. In a press release, the institute hailed the latest statistics, and noted that violent crime and property crime rates also seemed to be dropping.

Press release excerpt:

“Today is an exciting and promising day,” said Tracy Velázquez, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute (JPI). “Advocates and researchers have long argued that smart on crime policies that decrease the number of people in prisons and jails will yield public safety benefits. Today’s data further proves that we can put fewer people in prisons, improve public safety and save taxpayer dollars.”

In September, JPI, a Washington, D.C.-based research and policy organization, released data analysis on the 2010 FBI Uniform Crime Report noting a 6 percent drop in violent crime and a 2.7 percent drop in property crime across the country.

“These are trends to be celebrated, but there is still more to be done,” added Velázquez. “Incarceration in this country is still alarmingly high. We are glad to see some states making wise fiscal decisions, diverting resources away from incarceration and toward community treatment and re-entry supports for people on parole. But the past year’s successes will be lost if we do not continue our progress. The federal government continues to foolishly devote more resources toward prisons while cutting social services and juvenile justice programs that help put troubled kids back on track. We can’t incarcerate our way to public safety; rather, we need to focus on those policies that improve individual and community well-being.”

End of press release

It remains to be seen if states are truly finding (and funding) more cost-effective and humane methods of dealing with offenders. Are the states really being so creative, or are they just trimming prison populations a bit to save money? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

From Paben

David Stalheim, candidate for county executive, said he would support having Whatcom County Council record executive sessions. He also said he’s OK with eliminating the state Sunshine Committee, which is combing through exemptions in the public disclosure laws and making recommendations on which to keep and which to eliminate.

His opinions were expressed on a questionnaire sent out by the Washington Coalition for Open Government. Combing for the responses from candidates in our primary election, his name didn’t appear. I then post this post about two of the Ferndale mayoral candidates’ responses.

Stalheim forwarded me an email chain showing that, after I posted it, he sent an email to WCOG saying he’d submitted his answers but they haven’t appeared on the website. A WCOG employee apologized and said they’d upload it. Click here to see it.

Responses from the other executive candidates - Tom Anderson, Doug Ericksen and Jack Louws - don’t appear on the website.

Stalheim’s email to WCOG: (more…)

Mayor Jensen

The Washington Coalition for Open Government sent questionnaires to candidates throughout the state asking them about various open government topics. They asked everything from whether a candidate would support recording executive sessions to whether they’d like to see the state Sunshine Committee retained.

For our primary election, which is Tuesday, it appears only two Ferndale mayoral candidates responded to the questionnaire: Mayor Gary Jensen and current City Council member Lloyd Zimmerman. Click here to see all the respondants.

Zimmerman

There were some interesting differences. One question asked about executive sessions, where bodies can go behind closed doors for a discussion. They have to be on narrow purposes allowed by law. Our local city councils frequently do this. But, what if they go into executive session and start talking about stuff that’s not protected by state law, essentially holding an improper session? Unless somebody tells us members of the public, we don’t know. And even if we get word that what they talked about wasn’t proper, there’s no way to prove it without an audio recording. (more…)

From Paben

Allied Daily Newspapers supported raising the per-day penalty against public agencies for records violations to $500 and lowering it to $0, but it does not support a bill that only lowers it to zero, said Roland Thompson of Allied Daily Newspapers.

I just got off the phone with Thompson, asking him about his position on the bill. For full disclosure, The Bellingham Herald is a member of Allied Daily Newspapers.

Judges can award per-day penalties to public agencies that break the law by wrongly withholding public records from requesters. Under current law, the judge can issue per-day fines of between $5 and $100.

Apparently, an earlier version of HB 1899 changed that to a range of $0 to $500. Thompson testified in favor of that bill, calling it a good compromise. But, unbeknownst to him, the committee had already changed it to $0-$100 and sent the bill out the door.

“I had no idea it had changed,” he said.

Years ago the statute of limitations was changed from five years to one year, so public agencies could be liable for fewer days of wrongly withholding records. As part of that bill, Thompson wanted, but didn’t get, the upper penalty limited increased to $500.

The reality is, he said, adjusting the lower and upper ends won’t really have that big of a difference. Most of the awards are in between, he said, and the upper limit has been used sparingly.

Also, the big dollar figures come from attorneys fees anyway, not penalties, he said. He pointed out that it takes a lot of days at $5 per day to reach one hour for an attorney getting paid $250 an hour (50, to be specific).

The governor is scheduled to take action on the bill today (this morning, actually). He said he expects that she’ll sign it.

Click here to see my previous post on this topic.

See more on this from the TNT, our sister paper.

What do you think?

From Paben

The Legislature has sent to the governor a bill that lets judges fine public agencies $0 when they violate the public records act and wrongfully withhold records.

Current law lets judges set the per-day penalty between $5 and $100. The bill, HB 1899, changes that to a per-day penalty of between $0 and $100. It passed with broad bi-partisan support. In the House it passed 96-2. In the Senate, it passed 47-0, with two absences. All of the 40th and 42nd district representatives and senators voted for it.

Those in support of the bill said it’s a good bill that “addresses the disingenuous use of the PRA for personal gain, allowing the court to impose no penalties in appropriate circumstances,” according to a bill report.

Testimony against it called for an increase in the $100 limit to $500, saying that public agencies don’t have to pay anything if they follow the law.

It appears that open-government advocates were split on this one. While Allied Daily Newspapers supported the bill, the Washington Coalition for Open Government didn’t.

Gov. Chris Gregoire is scheduled to take action on it after 9:30 a.m. tomorrow.

What do you think?

From Paben

Gov. Gregoire

The Freedom Foundation, a libertarian think tank, has filed a lawsuit against the governor for claiming “executive privilege” and not releasing public records.

The lawsuit says that, under state law, the records have to be released unless they meet specific exemption criteria. “Executive privilege” doesn’t exist in statute, the organization’s press release says, and this lawsuit will test whether it applies in the context of the Public Records Act. Click here to see the state Constitution.

Click here to see more from our sister paper The Olympian.

Brad Shannon from The Olympian is reporting on his Politics Blog that the governor’s office says they haven’t seen the lawsuit yet. It was filed in Thurston County Superior Court.

Click here to see the complaint (I couldn’t help but notice they spelled the governor’s name wrong at the top of the complaint).

Click here to see from the foundation.

From the Freedom Foundation:

The Foundation contends the governor’s office frequently asserts “executive privilege”—which does not exist in statute—to hide documents from the public. Since 2007, the governor’s office asserted executive privilege more than 500 times in response to 46 public records requests. (more…)

Crawford

From Paben

Whatcom County Council member Sam Crawford sent an e-mail to residents about proposed rural zoning changes but asked that they delete text and evidence he used his personal e-mail account if they forward it.

Now, the clerk of the Whatcom County Council says she’ll work on drafting a formal policy governing the use of personal e-mail accounts for county business.

Under state law, council members’ e-mails are considered public records, and they’re subject to release through a public disclosure request, even if they’re written and sent through a council member’s personal e-mail account.

Dana Brown-Davis, clerk of the council, said standard practice is for council members to use work e-mail accounts, but if they must use personal e-mail ones, they need to send a copy of the e-mail to the general council e-mail address so staff can retain a copy.

Using his county e-mail account, Crawford around 11 a.m. on Saturday, April 2, sent an e-mail to council members and county staff about the upcoming draft rural zoning and policy changes. The council is scheduled to consider the changes in coming weeks. He sent a copy to the council e-mail account, so staff had a copy, Brown-Davis said.

Then, at about 11:30 a.m., using his personal e-mail account, he forwarded that e-mail with new text to other people. But, at the end of the new text, he wrote, “If you forward this email, PLEASE remove the elements that indicate I sent it to you using my personal email, as well as this introductory commentary. Thank you!”

The Herald obtained the e-mail from another person. Crawford retained a copy of the e-mail in his personal e-mail account and immediately forwarded it to The Herald upon request.

On Monday, Crawford sent an apology to council members and county staff.

“Obviously I regret doing this,” he wrote. “It doesn’t look like ‘transparency’, and that reflects poorly on me, the council, and county government. For that, I am sorry.”

In the apology, Crawford said that after sending the first e-mail he logged into his personal account. Then, he decided to forward the council e-mail to a number of friends but did it from his personal email. He sent the new version with additional text to his county e-mail address, “thinking that covered my ‘getting it in the county system’ requirements,” he said.

“Dumb dumb dumb. In the time it took me to write the disclaimer about using personal email, I probably could have logged back into the county system and sent it,” he wrote in the apology note. “In my thoughtless haste, I didn’t, instead attempted a lame disclaimer, and failed to follow the protocol.” (more…)

From Paben

This is a follow-up to this post about public disclosure requests. I just got back from picking up the complaints for damages copies at the county courthouse building. There are 28 claims for damages from Sept. 1, 2010, through March 7, 2011.

That’s about the same as Bellingham, which had 31 in that same time period.

I’ll begin working on combing through them, scanning documents and summarizing them. It may take me a while, though.

It only took Whatcom County a little over a week to provide the records. I believe the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office held them.

UPDATED AT 7:45 P.M. ON MARCH 29: I’m currently at the County Council meeting and Perry Rice, information technology manager for Whatcom County, handed me a print out of an e-mail it appears he sent me this evening. It says the following:

Perry

From Paben

This is a follow-up on the Sunshine Week posts. Just today I got the response to a Freedom of Information Act request I filed with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General.

Federal law prohibits transit agencies receiving federal funds, including Whatcom Transportation Authority, from competing with the private sector in providing charter service. If a company feels like they’re being illegally competed with, they can ask USDOT for an opinion, or they can file a complaint with the department. The department can issue cease and desist orders.

I asked for copies of any advisory opinions, complaints or cease and desist orders. The response: They don’t have any.

I filed the request on February 1, 2011, and got a response letter dated March 17. It’s postmarked March 23. By the time I got it, it was nearly two months after I filed it. My understanding of federal law is they’re supposed to provide some kind of response within 28 days.

In comparison, I filed a request for records at the city of Bellingham (the complaint for damages records, if you recall) and they were available in less than a week. At 2 p.m. on Monday, March 21, I filed the same request with Whatcom County. I haven’t heard back yet. State law says they must provide some response within five business days. We’re now beyond that.

In case you’re curious, here is what I wrote:

Hello:
This is a public disclosure request seeking copies of all claims for damages filed with Whatcom County, as well as the official responses to the claimants, for the period Sept. 1, 2010 through March 7, 2011. Please feel free to give me an e-mail or call anytime about this request.
Thanks much,
Jared

From Paben

Bellingham paid $13,898.55 when a city employee turned on water to a home without the owner present to close the faucets, resulting in lots of water damage inside the house.

Also in the period Sept. 1, 2010, through March 7, 2011, it paid out $9,105.37 to property owners whose properties were damaged when water lines broke and caused localized flooding.

It paid $7,815.46 to people whose vehicles were hit by city employees.

It paid $3,363.50 when city crews turned heavy vehicles around in a driveway, breaking a water line below the pavement.

It paid $2,406.30 when a woman stepped on a utility lid in a yard and had the lid flip, hitting her and cutting her badly.

It paid $1,835 when, during a project to underground power lines in alleys downtown, it removed a structure blocking water from running off into an adjacent building, causing it to flood when it rained.

It paid $350 when crews were drilling into the sidewalk in Fairhaven and a chunk of concrete broke loose and fell into a building basement below, smashing a credit card machine.

It paid $300 to replace a door fire fighters damaged when they entered an apartment.

Those are all they paid out in that time, according to the claims for damages I got from a public disclosure request. Here are the largest requests, although nothing has yet been paid in the cases:

• Paul Janke on Sept. 30 filed a request for $192.250, saying that’s that amount the city damaged the value of his undeveloped lot along Chuckanut Drive by refusing to extend water service to it. The city said city law prohibits extensions of water and sewer outside the urban growth area. This one has ended up in court.

• Laurie Carlson on Dec. 7, 2010 filed a claim to the city for $128,000. Her husband, Edwin, was a former city employee. While at the city he had life insurance, and she was a benificiary. He lost the coverage when he stopped working for the city in early 2008 (he had a terminal illness; he died that July). He could have converted it to an individual policy, through which his wife could still have received payments, but he wasn’t told by city officials he could do that, even as they knew he was ill, the claim states. This is an ongoing case.

• The Unit Owners’ Associate of 1000 Garden Condominiums filed a claim on Jan. 25, saying that a city water main break flooded part of the condo building and did damage. The request was for $175,000 plus attorneys fees and costs. The water main break occured on April 26, 2009, along High Street. The association contacted the city, but there was delay in shutting off the water, the claim states. This case is ongoing.

These are, of course, in some cases just the claimants side of the story, not the city’s. The point is, however, that we likely wouldn’t know about these without these if we couldn’t request them through public disclosure laws. Some of these, like the city employee turning on the water while an owner wasn’t home, are expensive mistakes.

Click here to see a spreadsheet of the claims. Look up the claim number for ones you are interested in. The actual claims, by number, are below:

2010-31 (more…)

From Paben

In late 2009, the White House issued a directive to federal agencies requiring them to take immediate, specific steps to become more open to the public. Then the Associated Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking copies of documents related to that directive, including internal e-mails.

The administration censored 194 pages of internal e-mail about it Open Government Directive. AP requested them more than a year ago. The White House Office of Management and Budget blacked-out entire pages of some e-mails between federal employees discussing the new openness rules. It even blacked out an e-mail discussing how to respond to AP’s request.

That’s all according to the Associated Press, which tested federal agencies’ responses under FOIA last year. It published the following story as part of Sunshine Week. This story hasn’t run in print yet.

The story shows that there’s a major lack of sunshine in the Obama administration.

In other news, the feds have unveiled a new website called FOIA.gov.

The article:

Two years into its pledge to improve government transparency, the Obama administration took action on fewer requests for federal records from citizens, journalists, companies and others last year even as significantly more people asked for information. The administration disclosed at least some of what people wanted at about the same rate as the previous year.

People requested information 544,360 times last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act from the 35 largest agencies, up nearly 41,000 from the previous year, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. But the government responded to nearly 12,400 fewer requests. (more…)

From Paben

For Sunshine Week, I wanted to show a concrete example of a public disclosure request and the response to it.

Late on Monday, March 7, I submitted a public disclosure request to the city of Bellingham seeking all claims for damages filed with the city from Sept. 1, 2010 until that date, as well as the city’s response to those claims.

Last week, I got a call from a city public records officer asking me if I’d like to inspect the records or pay to have them copied. I elected to have the copied. They were ready by late last week. It was a prompt and professional response to a disclosure request, and I give kudos to the city for that.

The city did withhold some of the records, providing a one-page summary of what was withheld and the legal reason for doing so. The records were medical records related to two cases; in both, there were personal injuries and people were asking the city for compensation.

The records I did get were very interesting. The claims varied much. There were claims from people who hit a pot hole with their cars and wanted compensation for new tires and/or wheels. There were also various damages claims from people whose properties were damaged when water lines broke and they were flooded. There was also a more complex one: A landowner filed a claim against the city, claiming lost value in a Chuckanut Drive-area home lot because the city wouldn’t extend water service to it.

I, personally, learned something: The city pays out more claims than I previously thought. I thought it was more common to deny them and battle it out in court.

I took the claims and put them into a spreadsheet summarizing them. Click here to see the spreadsheet.

I’ll try to scan all of them later and post them, although it could take me some time. In some of the claims, the claimants included photos of damage to their properties.

Contrast that with my Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General. I need to look at when I filed it, but it’s been weeks and there hasn’t been any kind of response. (more…)

From Paben

I’ve got various public records-type issues to report in honor of Sunshine Week.

I just wrote an article, which may be published online only, about using GIS programs in Bellingham and Ferndale to look up property information. It also covers using the Whatcom County property database to look up more information, as well as using state records to look up people behind LLCs and county Auditor’s recorded document records.

I also just got a notice from Sam Taylor, city clerk for Ferndale, about new city documents that have been uploaded to the website. A new section of public records now shows every resolution the city has on record from 1937 forward, he said.

Ferndale did it as part of Sunshine Week. The city is a member of the Washington Coalition for Open Government. Click here to go to the open government section of the city website.

He said his goal is to get a well-functioning system up for every city contract. The trick is making it searchable. That is still a work in progress.

“No other small city in Whatcom County has this much public information available on their websites, and we hope to always remain ahead of the curve for our size!” Taylor wrote.

Also, I just got a note that some residents have created a searchable records database on Lummi Island ferry issues. Wynne Lee says that resident Nancy Ging is the web guru who made this happen. Click here to see more on it at the Lummi Island Ferry Forum.

The Herald has an open government section of our website that we’re working to update as we speak. Click here to see it.

Following is an article I wrote on property records data. It should be posted to the section soon: (more…)

From Stark

Left over from last week, here are some background documents behind the Washington Department of Ecology’s decision to reject, for now, a moratorium on new water well drilling for home construction in the Lake Whatcom watershed, based on Whatcom County’s pledge to move ahead faster with other steps to prevent further polluting runoff.

Here is Whatcom County Executive Pete Kremen’s letter to Ecology outlining his position on new measures to protect the lake.

Here is Ecology’s letter to Mayor Dan Pike, explaining the department’s ruling against his petition to impose a moratorium on new wells in the lake watershed.

Here is Ecology’s overview of the effort to improve lake water quality and prevent further deterioration.