House Bill Would Limit Public Records Requesters

By LaVendrick Smith, WNPA, Olympia News Bureau

OLYMPIA—Lawmakers are looking to modify the Public Records Act in an effort to help local agencies that claim they’re burdened by overly broad and massive public-records requests.

House Bill 2576 would give local agencies the power to limit the time they spend each month responding to public-records requests, and would allow local agencies to charge a fee for providing public records that are requested for commercial purposes.

Rep. Joan McBride, D-Kirkland, the bill’s sponsor, said the bill isn’t meant to undermine transparency in local government, but instead help limit what she calls the “one percent” of requests that amount to harassment of taxpayer-supported public agencies.

“This is a very modest bill and a good, elegant, first step in talking about public records,” McBride said Jan. 28 at the bill’s hearing in front of the House Local Government Committee.

The bill has received wide support from officials in local government agencies, who say they don’t have the necessary staff to deal with some of the broadest requests from private companies and citizens, and are upset that they can’t recover the costs for providing large volumes of records.

Pat Fitzpatrick, deputy city attorney in Kent, said he supports the bill creating a way for local agencies to recover the costs of providing the broad records requests for profitable use from private entities.

“Cities, universally, are in support of the Public Records Act,” Fitzpatrick said. “What we are not in support of is private corporations making profit off the backs of citizens.”

Diana Carlen, a representative of LexisNexis, a software company that provides customers with public records, said most of the company’s clients need the records for information on things such as local government, law enforcement and businesses. She said the bill would force the company to pass the increased costs on to their customers.

“That is not going to stop the problem of overly broad and harassing requests,” Carlen said.

The proposal also creates a commission to oversee disputes between agencies and requesters, and creates an account where 20 percent of the amount awarded to a requester in court against an agency would go to supporting the commission.

Opponents of the bill, including media members, say the bill weakens the Public Records Act, which was created by a citizen initiative in 1972.

Arthur West, a citizen activist from Olympia, said the bill creates hysteria about the number of people who are using public-records requests to harass agencies for profit, and that the bill would have unintended consequences.

“There are some overbroad requests, and there could be something carefully tailored to fix that,” West said. “This bill isn’t it.”

A government watchdog organization takes issue with establishment of a new commission, saying it’s not needed for the oversight of disputes between requesters and agencies.

“It takes disputes involving public records requests out of a neutral venue—our courts—and into a political arena,” said Juli Bunting from the Washington Coalition for Open Government.

Some opponents agree that something needs to be done to curb the requests that have become a burden for local governments, but said the bill would go too far in limiting citizens requesting records for legitimate reasons.

Kathy George, from the Washington Coalition for Open Government, said while the bill might stop the “one percent” of abusers, the rest of the requesters are hurt by allowing an agency to limit the time it spends working on requests.

“You’re saying ‘sorry, but you all have to wait in line,’” George said. “This is really drawing a line between the government and the people it serves.”

(This story is part of a series of news reports from the Washington State Legislature provided through a reporting internship sponsored by the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation. Reach reporter LaVendrick Smith at lavendricksmith@gmail.com; follow him on Twitter: @LaVendrickS)