Judge Kip Stilz to Retire

A point of personal privilege, as they say in the Legislature.

This story from The Olympian describes the retirement of a fabulous human being, Thurston County District Court judge Kip Stilz. He has worked on open-government and especially open courts issues for years. And he is one of those people in a community who everyone genuinely likes and respects.

TNT Editorial on Super Secret Fire Fighters

This Tacoma News Tribune editorial describes the ridiculous extent to which the Tacoma Fire Department goes to withhold information about fires. The department cites a federal health-care regulation as grounds for, among other things, not even saying whether it rescued anyone. From a burning building, broadcast on TV, with loads of witnesses. Nope. Tacoma Fire claims it's protecting the "privacy" of those rescued--or not rescued, they really won't say.

! State Auditor's Public Records Performance Audit Is Out !

The State Auditor's Office conducted an amazing and thorough performance audit of 30 state and local agencies of varying sizes across the state to assess their compliance with the Public Records Act. The Auditor's Office produced this very nice report today.

Holy smokes. You should read this. It describes individual agencies' performance but also discusses trends, statistics, and patterns.

Quite a few journalists read og-blog. We humbly suggest to our media readers that this audit report is chock full of news stories. The agencies audited are all over state so there's plenty of local interest for a newspaper in just about every corner of the state.

UPDATES: Chris Mulick of the Tri-City Herald writes this about the performance audit report. The Seattle Times has this piece. The Olympian has this piece.

Ladenburg: Recording Executive Sessions Requires Too Much Technology

John Ladenburg is running for Attorney General against the incumbent, Rob McKenna. Running against a popular incumbent means coming up with some creative issues separating you from the incumbent.

McKenna supported the bill to require the recording of executive sessions. Ladenburg doesn't. Here's a portion of a story from The (Vancouver) Columbian:

"[Ladenburg] parts ways with McKenna on one issue the incumbent championed in the 2008 session — requiring local governments to tape their executive sessions to provide backup evidence if they are accused of violating the state’s open public meetings law. The bill, hotly opposed by many legislators from both parties, failed to pass, and Ladenburg said it 'would not be a priority for me.' For one thing, he said, it would be expensive to implement, because a simple tape recorder cannot distinguish among voices. 'The superior courts tried it, but it didn’t work,' he said. 'The technology required is akin to studio technology.' If an audio tape is going to be used as evidence, he said, 'You’d better know who said it and when.'"

The purpose of recording executive sessions is not to prove voice prints with 100% accuracy like on CSI. It's to allow a judge to see if the topics covered in executive session were legally allowed or not. Besides, if a recording showed seeming Open Public Meetings Act violations and the question of the identity of individual voices arose, there are simple ways to determine this. Like playing the recording in a deposition and asking the official, "Is that your voice?" Pretty simple. No "studio technology" required.

Ladenburg's strained excuse for not wanting to record executive sessions reminds us of another county official's: Taping (reel-to-reel, presumably) would take up too much storage space in county buildings.

Kitsap Sun Editorial on Open Gov't and Forum

The Kitsap Sun writes this editorial on open government, how it affects Kitsap-area residents, and announcing the May 21 open government forum in Bremerton.

One of the forum panelists will be Allied Law Group's own Michele Earl-Hubbard.

Story on Legal-Invoice Victory

The Olympia writes this piece on West v. Thurston County, the recent Court of Appeals case holding that the county's outside-counsel legal invoices are subject to disclosure. The story notes that this case is the first to apply a new law specifically passed to deal with the disclosure of legal invoices.