Reckless Requests

• Author: Lorelei Laird
• Pages: 16-18

The Docket

EDITED BY KEVIN DAVIS / KEVIN.DAVIS@AMERICANBAR.ORG

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY SARA WADFORD

National

Pulse

Reckless Requests

Public records laws are meant to shine light on the dark

side of government, but they may be abused

By Lorelei Laird

In 2015, a government o cia l in

Snohomish County, Washington, received

an email from a “Mr. Public Requestor,”

seeking all public records of a ny kind

from all county-owned sm artphones.

Despite the breadth of this e xtraordi-

nary request , the anonymity of the person who sent it,

and its lack of an obvious pur pose, the county couldn’t

turn it away. Under Washington’s Public Records Act,

none of those factors invalida tes such a request. Gage

Andrews, then the cou nty’s public records o cer, esti-

mated it would take 12,000 hours t o download and

make the necessar y redactions.

But 935 hours into fulfi lling that request , the requester

canceled without expla nation. Because the law doesn’t

permit Snohomish County to cha rge for lost sta time,

it was out about $30,000.

Such stories have played out all acros s Washington

in the past decade. Ac cording to a 2016 report from the

state auditor’s o ce, the cost of fi lling public record s

requests went up 70 percent between 2011 and mid-2015,

driven by increases i n the number and complexity of

requests. They came f rom companies, nonprofi ts, law

fi rm s, the media and individuals. That’s why the state

legislature passe d two reform bills last year.

“We just hope that that is at least a deterr ent to some

of these—I call them vexatious, v indictive requesters,”

says state Rep. Terry Nealey, a Republican from ea stern

Washington who sponsored one of the bills. “ That was

really the goal of mi ne all along—was to try to prevent

them from gummi ng up the works.”

Public records laws—state law an alogues to the federal

Freedom of Information Act—are intended t o allow citi-

zens to keep tabs on their govern ments and can expose

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