This Beehiv is 100% about the Attorney General’s Office model rules comment period ending 5 p.m. Nov. 17. This will be the last regularily scheduled Beehiv before that comment period ends, so this Beehiv is focused on those proposed new model rules. The new model rules are intended to serve as a guide for public records officers statewide - see Cousins v. Department of Corrections majority ruling, pages 21 & 36.
Photo: Self of Washington State Legislative Campus
Table of Contents
Reminders
Again, the model rules comment period ends at 5 PM Pacific, November 17. That’s a Monday. Just e-mail in your comments to [email protected].
Public servants are flooding the comment zone. It’s important that the requestor community speak up here.
Especially as to 2, there is an effort to remove anonymity from the public records request process.
There also is an uproar - that I sympathize with - regarding the proposal to categorize public records requests.
Again, State Supreme Court recognizes legislative intent to have the AGO’s model rules help process public records requests.
Potential Topics
Here are some things I recommend asking be placed in these model rules… and you can thank the Public Records Officer podcast Episode 12 for some of these ideas.
With that, here goes:
Allow public agencies to either waive fee collection for $4.99 and under of accumulated fees or allow that to accumulate in a 366-day period before requiring a paper check.
Encourage public agencies to use PayPal or other electronic payment mediums to get compensation for producing public records. Paper checks are troublesome and from a bygone era.
Ensure the PRA model rules apply to the courts.
Recommend blocking auto-deletion of public records such as text messages, Microsoft Teams/MS Teams meetings & Slack materials.
Suggest a solution for public records requests to address the use of any software similar to MS Teams, Slack and other virtual office software. Perhaps make equal to text messages from cell phones and/or e-mails.
Ask the triage of public records requests proposal be dropped for now to be refined in collaboration with both public records officers and requestor community.
Sadly, these model rules will not address as per the words of one testifier to the public hearing in Robert Scales, CEO of Police Strategies LLC & former public servant attorney in several capacities plus “both given and attended numerous trainings on the public records act over the last 30 years”…
The problem is not the rules. We have one of the strongest Public Records Act in the country. The problem is not that we don't have sufficient rules or laws on public records. The problem is we don't have agency accountability and we don’t have enforcement. The vast majority of agencies are in full compliance with the Public Records Act and will produce records in a timely and complete manner.
Food for thought.
A Programming Note
Finally, these Beehivs are scheduled to go out every other Saturday. I intend to do only one or two emergency Beehivs in between them. Depending on the quality of some promised letters on rulemaking, I may make an “emergency” Beehiv next weekend gathering those letters.
However, I do another Beehiv generally agreed to be published the same Saturday so programming may have to change in early 2026…