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Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Olympian Editorial re: Deleted Email Case

Let's take a short breather from Tom Carr news. Believe it or not, there are other important open-government matters in Washington state, like the deleted email case.

"If [Thurston County Superior Court Judge] Hirsch's ruling is allowed to stand, it will gut the state's Open Public Records law and limit the amount of information members of the public are able to pry out of the hands of government officials. ... The keys here are whether e-mails are public records and whether they must be retained or can be destroyed at will. The ramifications of Judge Hirsch's ruling are immense because they will determine whether public officials can avoid embarrassing disclosure of documents simply by destroying them."

http://www.theolympian.com/opinion/story/196600.html

Note: Allied Law Group represents the records requestor in this case so we will not provide commentary.