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Friday, November 2, 2007

Douglas Moore: Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week

The State Sunshine and Open Records blog, which covers open-government issues nationwide and is terrific, gives a weekly award to the "Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week." This is a pesky citizen who--dawg gone it--asks for public records and even insists that the agency follows the law. Don't you hate people like that?

This week's Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week is from Washington state. He is Douglas Moore who fought the state Department of Corrections to obtain electronic records in an electronic format. He lost in Thurston County Superior Court but DOC, after some prodding from the Governor, settled the case, agreeing to provide the records in an electronic format and paying Moore $65,000 in attorneys fees. We would add that Moore's attorneys, Bendich, Stobaugh and Strong, get some credit here; they probably worked on a contingency fee and were not assured of being paid for their hard work. Congratulations to all.

Past og-blog postings on the Moore case are here, here, and here.