Author of article has no background/understanding of the "sunshine" laws in effect in WA. Those laws may (do) explain a lot of why things go this way with any/all FOIA in WA.
Source: 100s of FOIA requests to various WA government agencies.
Source: 100s of FOIA requests to various WA government agencies.
https://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/news/city-mu...
It's because Washington agencies are required to cover reasonable attorneys fees for their opponents after losing open records lawsuits (one of the factors in our FOIA laws)
So when Author sent the request to Seattle, they have this above cited example (and 100s of others across the the State) where a mistake could create a lawsuit the costs this loads of money.
Did you know that the burden is on the agency to establish that its denial of inspection is proper?
Did you know that the court could award you an amount between $5 and $100 a day for each day that access to the records was denied.
So, if they don't give you everything you ask for you can sue. And it's easy (relatively) to win in WA for that because of our FOIA laws, then the agency has to pay for the lawyers and a penalty for delay of the records. For emails that means $5 * (Days of Delay) * (Number of Records).
In short, if Seattle fucked up this FOIA request, denied or delayed -- that could have cost them millions of dollars.
The author didn't understand that and (like a fool) blames the city and city-workers.
Sorry, but that sounds like bullshit. The Washington law provides for agencies to take reasonable time on a request, especially one a request that is complicated and broad. In fact, unlike the FOI law for federal and other states, the Washington law does not proscribe the number of days that an agency must respond by, only that they be made "promptly":
http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=42.56.520
The city of Shoreline did not have to pay out $500K "because of mistakes they made on a FOIA request", not according to what you posted:
> The City of Shoreline will have to reimburse $438,555 to cover the plaintiffs' costs as Washington agencies are required to cover reasonable attorneys fees for their opponents after losing open records lawsuits. Shoreline also agreed last year to pay a $100,000 statutory penalty after the court found that the city violated the state public records act.
They paid $438K for fighting the request for seven years. They paid an additional $100K penalty because they were have found to violated the law. They did not pay for "mistakes", at least not mistakes in good faith.
Another example in WA, the kind of thing that scares public sector employees.
I have direct personal experience with this, and direct knowledge of others receiving payout from government (in WA) for similar violations (almost had to start another suit this month).
Your narrow interpretation is splitting hairs. The danger is real to the government workers executing these requests
Edit: two more easy to find examples
https://www.aclu.org/news/judge-fines-tacoma-police-departme...
www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/mar/24/justices-uphold-502000-public-records-fine-against/?amp-content=amp
In your original comment [0], you suggested that employees feared of making innocent mistakes that would lead to open records lawsuits. None of the examples you've provided describe that situation. Instead, they involve agencies (and their lawyers) who have decided to refuse a request and fight it out in the courts. What does that have to do with being a danger to employees who handle these requests?
This means that these employees frequently send more, faster to avoid a big public issue.
The point is that individual people feel pressure and make decisions based on these articles (and many not so public cases) that in retrospect are not that great.
And then some blogger makes foolish claims, as if it was incompetence rather than fear.
I'll not comment further
> The point is that individual people feel pressure and make decisions based on these articles
That is literally the situation of every public servant -- as just about any police officer will tell you. The difference with FOI is that the law provides ample protection for government employees to take their time to get it right, and every investigative journalist I've ever worked with puts up with those delays -- it's only when the delay goes into months/years such that it's tantamount to a rejection that legal action is threatened, because the lawsuit itself takes months to resolve.
The only example lawsuits you've found were ones in which the agencies refused to fulfill the request. Until you can show a single instance in which a state employee, or even an agency, was punished because they were late while trying to respond in good faith, I don't think we should assume you know what you're talking about when you claim the author has "no background/understanding" of WA's public records laws.
It's especially absurd that you're trying to argue that the mistake the city of Seattle made in his case was done out of hurried fear, when the author provides correspondence that shows he and the city emailed back-and-forth from April to August before they sent him the data. A technical screwup (via internal miscommunication) is the most plausible explanation by far, as no one in the IT or FOI office had any reason to rush this request.