Rep. Fagan talks Palouse public records requests

The town of Palouse is experiencing a lull in public records requests, but state and city officials met at the Green Frog May 15 to discuss possible public record legislation for future situations.

For 10 months last year, the two-person city office staff received dozens of requests for information from Steve McGehee and Jim Farr of Palouse. The research requests had both clerks staying late and even on weekends.

McGehee and Farr subsequently used the record requests to research what they contend is financial and political misdeeds.

In light of the requests, a group of citizens lobbied Rep. Susan Fagan to propose legislation that would charge citizens for any time over five hours a city agency must spend researching such requests.

That bill was supported by Gary Alexander, a ranking member of the state Ways and Means Committee.

Alexander and Fagan both attended the morning meeting at the café to talk over their reasons for proposing the bill, which never made it out of the state committee.

“There’s consistent abusers that do it to bog down the government,” said Tracy Milano at the meeting, one of the volunteers who lobbied Fagan for legislation on the requests.

Tracy Milano is the wife of Palouse councilmember Mike Milano.

Tuesday, Farr said in an interview with the Gazette he didn’t think he and McGehee lately have made excessive requests.

“They’d try anything to stop it. We haven’t really done any requests since last winter when they went to the legislature with that thing,” Farr said.

Of their high amount of requests last year, Farr said this was justified because the city kept changing their answers.

“It all started out with they weren’t very open about what they do. They were pretty put out that we even wanted to get it out. When we started our questions, one turned into another. It turned into so many. The answers we’re getting are so incompetent and not conclusive,” Farr said.

He added he and McGehee now have several boxes worth of city, state and federal paperwork on the city’s inner workings.

When asked if they had achieved their goals of revealing government corruption, Farr said those goals were not very achievable.

He added he is taking a break for the summer because he realized how hard it was to get anything accomplished working with the city. McGehee has several “intensive things” still cooking in terms of government regulation, Farr said.

At the meeting Saturday morning, Rep. Fagan stressed she wasn’t for shutting off public access to the public, just regulating access so towns aren’t bombarded.

“We just want to have some way for local government to recover costs when someone is over using this,” Alexander said.

Tracy Milano said one request made by McGehee last month asked for all signed city ordinances and resolutions in the past several years, a request that amounted to 280 pages. No one picked it up for a month, she said.

Milano said the excessive requests have stressed out the city clerks with the extra hours.

City Clerk Joyce Beeson later said she didn’t mind the requests. Her real concern was that cities receiving massive requests be compensated, she said.

Bill Will, a board member for the Washington Coalition for Open Government, told the Gazette Tuesday records requests are clearly a protected right of the people and should remain so.

No restrictions should be placed on the public’s right to know, Will said.

“That’s a management problem, not a legal problem. They shouldn’t be going to the legislature with stupid ideas like this,” he said.

Records should be stored using better technology for easier access, instead of asking to change state legislation, he said.

He added that Washington taxpayers already pay for all government operations. So asking citizens to pay for requests is charging them twice.

Fagan said in a later interview she does not know if she will propose another bill on the requests.