Written by We received the following email at City Hall through our City Clerk’s office. We’ve been trained on most of the information before, but it is nice to have it all in one place on the web. Citizens may find it interesting to see how broadly public records are defined, and how much access you have to them. Page 6 of the website also provides a good reminder that “Public records include both records that an agency creates and records that an agency may receive or collect.” This is why we often remind people emailing city hall that their comments are part of the public record, and can be seen by others. (As an example, if you are a developer emailing a council member asking for support of a project, your email is a public record. Likewise, if you email a council member asking for a project application to be denied, this email is a public record.)
As a matter of courtesy, I’ve tried to use discretion over the years when sharing these records, often dropping citizens’ names unless they have told me using their name did not bother them. I’ve also passed on posting many items that have come across our email that did not have public policy value, or were just too personal (such as a thank-you to our emergency services for handling a family crisis).
I suspect that as more and more public controversies get played out on the internet, more of these public records will get posted in their entirety on “Pro” and “Con” websites. So, every citizen (including me) should: (1) strive to be really thoughtful about what we write to each other, (2) have a friend proof-read our writings whenever possible, (3) sleep on anything that we write that we feel emotional about, and (4) most importantly, remember that anything we write having to do with public policy could end up on the front page of the Seattle Times.
Here is the info on the new website:
___________________________________________
On Behalf Of Koziara, Leslie
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 1:47 PM
Subject: New online – “Public Records and Public Officials”
The Office of the Secretary of State and Washington State Archives are pleased to announce the addition of an interactive online resource titled “Public Officials and Public Records.” This new module is intended to introduce newly elected and newly appointed public officials to the new world of public records and their new responsibilities. It will be updated from time to time.
Secretary of State Sam Reed welcomes each participant and emphasizes his connection to public records and stresses the importance of public records in our democracy. State Archivist Jerry Handfield encouraged the development of this online resource to provide information on the ever changing world of electronic records and to provide easy access to the many resources available for the preservation of public records in Washington.
Also, this module reminds everyone of the importance of records management and that “All public records shall be and remain the property of the state of Washington. They shall be delivered by outgoing officials and employees to their successors….” (40.14.020 RCW)
Seasoned public officials may also find it useful as a reference guide.
Here is the link: http://www.sos.wa.gov/archives/RecordsManagement/PublicOfficialsandPublicRecords/index.html
Thank you,
Washington State Archives
Open Records Act
Of significance is also the Open Records Office Act which is stuck in committee. Proposed by the Attorney General’s Office this would provide services to ensure citizens are given access to records: http://www.rentonlive.com
Brian
Interested in speaking to you.
Dear Randy,
I am an MPH student from UW working on a class project about emergency preparedness among Renton residents with no English proficiency. I found your blog very engaging and up-to-date, unlike most other Renton blogs I have seen during my research. Would it be possible for me to speak to you either today or tomorrow for a short interview? I do not know Renton well, thus my questions will be focused on finding out more about Renton areas where there are a lot of immigrant and refugee populations, on earthquake and flood emergency preparedness, and some on historical background. Please feel free to give me a call at 312-363-8115 if you would like, or email at xenoach@gmail.com. Thank you very much! Looking forward to hearing from you soon!
Sincerely,
Xeno
Let me get this straight: I love the open records act.
But this relentless spotlight also suppresses whimsical ideas from being discussed, or ideas that aren’t quite flushed out and perfect and ready to presented. Sadly, it’s the “what if” Scenario that usually produce the “win-win” outcomes that we all need.
….
I imagine that our views of the founding fathers would be quite different if we had all their output to inspect.
Rational Retention
The intent of the open records act is laudable, but the implementation allows unlimited requests and requires agencies to finance the research and assembly of all kinds of information. This invites abuse and results in a significant expense to local governments and too often wastes the time of staff. The law should be adjusted so taxpayers are not forced to finance misuse of the act by a minority of malcontents who are often less interested in revealing government abuse than they are interested in abusing a government agency for personal gratification.
If we made the process a little more like a challenge in football, limiting frivolous requests but allowing nearly unlimited requests, if it can be shown that individual request produce information that shows government misconduct, the system would serve its purpose much more efficiently.
Our broken tort system often forces doctors to practice defensive medicine, ordering far more tests and procedures than are actually justified by the illness, on the chance that a personal injury lawyer will attempt to convict them of malpractice because they didn’t do just one more expensive test or marginally effective procedure. This may be the primary driver of the spiraling cost of health care (and if you are paying attention you will note that Obama Care does nothing about this issue).
Similarly, local governments are being forced to practicing defensive record keeping, preserving as much information as possible in easily searchable but expensive electronic formats or perhaps worse, following procedures that deliberately delete records as soon as it is allowed so they no longer have the potential burden of researching it. Email is a searchable public record, but should it be? Are text messages? FaceBook posts? Tweets? Voice Mail?
How long before we are forced to create transcripts of every telephone conversation to any city desk phone or city cell phone or personal cell phones used within earshot of public property including parks, schools, hospitals, trails and rights-of-way? Is a newspaper or magazine delivered to a city address a searchable public record? Are Web pages that are viewed on publically owned computing devices? How about Randy’s blog. You can bet that a few people at City Hall will be reading this post in the next couple of weeks just because it is on a highly respected and informative local blog, but does reading it make it relevant? Fortunately, only some of these media are considered to be retainable public records now, but if you think these questions are a joke you, have definitely not been paying attention to the direction that courts have been leaning. It is jurislation (writing of defacto law by the judiciary branch), not legislation that is driving much of the legal requirements of public records retention.
My superficially informed guess is that Renton has expended tens of thousands on systems and person hours keeping, searching and producing public records. Multiply our experience by 205 cities, 39 counties and multitude of school, fire, water, sewer, hospital, port and conservation districts, and the state government and millions of dollars are getting diverted into tort tax avoidance (spending cash to avoid lawsuits) in this state.
Government corruption is expensive, but we may see the day in the not too distant future when the mechanisms’ designed to prevent corruption cost us more than corruption would have. There must be a happy medium that we have yet to find.