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?
May 5th, 2011 at 1:09 PM
If you Google abuses of Public Disclosure Act requests you can also see the problems on the side of government officials trying frantically to avoid any public scrutiny.
In 2008, one local politician with apparently something to hide tried to charge $2000 to have a copy of a single computer file made from while he worked at Skagit Council of Governments according to an article written in a Mt. Vernon paper.
May 5th, 2011 at 1:28 PM
Wow, $2,000 for one copy! I very much appreciate Washington law, which states that they can generally only charge about 15 cents per copy, unless their actual cost is higher. In Oregon, where I’m from. the law says something to the effect of reasonable charges. As a student reporter, I asked for the cell phone records for the government cell phones held by the student government president. The idea was I wanted to see if the phone was being used for government business or as a personal cell phone. The University of Oregon attorneys insisted they’d have to come through the records and redact them, and they insisted on charging for their time doing it. The result was it took months and they were going to charge an exorbitant amount for the records (something like a few hundred dollars). Of course, as a small nonprofit corporatation, we didn’t have that kind of money.
It was sickening.
May 7th, 2011 at 3:39 AM
If you Google abuses of Public Disclosure Act requests you can also see the problems on the side of government officials trying frantically to avoid any public scrutiny.
Read more: http://blogs.bellinghamherald.com/politics/og-links/allied-daily-newspapers-is-not-in-favor-of-allowing-0-per-day-records-violations-penalties/#ixzz1LfMsEnLL
May 20th, 2011 at 7:19 PM
[...] from the Bellingham Herald: Apparently, an earlier version of HB 1899 changed that to a range of $0 to $500. Thompson [...]