Island County has agreed to pay $15,000 to The Freedom Foundation, an Olympia-based advocacy group, after failing to act on a public-records request.
County commissioner Rick Hannold on Monday said he is disappointed the county agreed to the settlement, while a Foundation attorney characterized it as a victory for citizens’ rights.
The Freedom Foundation, a not-for-profit group that fights public-sector unions, in mid-January submitted a request under the state’s Public Records Act seeking emails that Island County employees sent to or received from a Kitsap County employee named Kelly O’Neal, Hannold said.
The county was legally required to respond within five days, acknowledging receipt of the request and providing an estimated time of fulfillment, the Foundation’s litigation counsel, David Dewhirst, wrote in an Oct. 2 blog post.
The county failed to respond at all to the request.
“This non-response was a clear violation of the letter and the spirit of the law,” Dewhirst wrote. He did not immediately return phone calls Monday.
The Foundation notified Island County of the failure, and asked that officials produce the requested records immediately and pay an amount roughly equivalent to court-imposed penalties and attorneys’ fees or face a PRA enforcement lawsuit, according to Dewhirst. The county opted about a month ago to settle for $15,000 and avoid a court battle, Hannold said.
The commissioners made the decision to settle in a closed-door session with staff from the county prosecuting attorney’s office, as permitted by law, he said.
The Freedom Foundation alleged no wrongdoing by any Island County employee. Rather, it sought to determine whether any county worker had exchanged emails with O’Neal, a department head who had allegedly violated state laws preventing public officials from using public resources to lobby, said Jeff Rhodes, a spokesperson for the foundation.
“I think we made PRA requests to every county in the state,” Rhodes said Monday.
Hannold said the state Public Records Act request came in by fax and requested immediate acknowledgement of receipt. “We did not do that because we never got it,” he said. “It was either a malfunction with the fax machine or it was buried in a whole bunch of other paper and never got to the appropriate party.”
In either case, Hannold said, the fact that the fax requested immediate acknowledgment but the Foundation never got that acknowledgment meant “they should have been calling us asking why we did not confirm,” he said. “Instead they did nothing for six months, until they filed their suit.”
“I would have preferred to take it to court, because a judge would have sided with us, but the costs would have been far more than $15,000,” said Hannold.
The county gets “literally hundreds” of Public Records Act requests every year, Hannold said, adding the county delivered the sought-after emails on the very day the Foundation filed suit.
The settlement money came from a fund that “is set aside for just this kind of thing,” he said.
An image accompanying Dewhirst’s blog post shows most of the Foundation’s staff posing jubilantly with their thumbs up, holding a giant replica of a check from Island County for $15,000.
“With Freedom Foundation on the march, Washingtonians’ rights under the PRA are safer and getting stronger every day,” the Freedom Foundation’s blog post concludes.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that the Foundation had already filed a lawsuit. They had not. Rather, the organization requested the county produce the records and pay fees and fines or face an enforcement lawsuit.
