Jefferson County has paid more than $320,000 in the past 10 years to settle lawsuits brought against it for violations of the state Open Public Records Act.

In the latest case involving the failure to provide attorney Alan E. Harvey with public documents he requested on behalf of a client, Jefferson County Administrator Philip Morley called it “flat out a mistake on our part.” Morley said other suits brought against the county involved differences in interpreting the law.

County commissioners unanimously approved an agreement Feb. 5 to settle the Harvey complaint for $50,000.

Morley says the county is working to improve its system to fill records requests in a timely manner with the addition of a new electronics public records system called GovQA and by hiring a new public records administrator, Ken Hugoniot.

Morley also acknowledged that the county now pays all claims out of its general fund because it is no longer insured by a state risk pool for public records violations.

Commissioners also recently delayed implementation of new rules on public records being enacted after Tom Thiersch, who won a Public Records Act judgment against Jefferson County Public Utility District last year, suggested changes.

The county processes about 500 public records requests a year, Morley said.

‘CLEARLY’ AVAILABLE

Most recently, the county agreed to pay Harvey $50,000 for failing to provide records, as was promised in November 2016, almost a year before that new electronic records system was implemented.

Harvey, who was at the time with Northwest Legal Advocates, filed a request on Nov. 16, 2016 for information from Jefferson County Sheriff David Stanko related to “a pending employment matter” involving sheriff’s Deputy Darrin Dotson. Harvey asked for “emails, communications and correspondence from Dr. Pilarc and any employee in Jefferson County between July 19, 2016 and Nov. 17, 2016,” according to the suit.

On Nov. 18, 2016, Sharon Mitchel, then Stanko’s office manager and confidential secretary, wrote in an email to Harvey that it would take until Jan. 3, 2017 to fill the request because of the size of the request.

Mitchel, wife of Stanko’s 2014 campaign manager, Steve Mitchel, also is no longer employed by the sheriff’s office.

The suit, filed by attorney David W. Gross of Vancouver, Washington, on behalf of Harvey, states, “There were no documents ever produced by the petitioner.”

Jefferson County Chief Civil Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Philip C. Hunsucker wrote on Dec. 7, 2017 that failing to provide the records was an unintentional error and that 14 days after the county was notified of the mistake, the county provided the records.

“Defendant [Jefferson County] provided additional records not in the possession of Defendant that it obtained from a psychologist who was involved in the fitness for duty evaluation of Plaintiff’s client and provided the records to Plaintiff on Dec. 7, 2017,” the county’s response read.

Noting the county had called it a “mistake,” attorney Gross wrote on Feb. 12: “Unfortunately, the Sheriff employed a person who was not trained nor supervised to facilitate, process, and/or expedite public records requests. If this was the ‘mistake’ referenced, then we are in agreement and believe the people of Jefferson County deserved better service. Unfortunately, the only way to get the information in this matter was to initiate legal action.

“It is unfortunate that legal action actually had to begin before the county would honor its legal obligations,” he wrote. “However, the agreement between the parties was negotiated in good faith and the matter is now settled.”

OTHER CASES

While the county admitted it erred in the Harvey case, in the two other records cases for which the county had to pay, the county disagreed over interpretations of the law on what constituted a public record, Morley noted.

“They were legitimately about a gray area of the law that got clarified judicially,” Morley said of prior cases that cost the county more than $200,000 to settle, not including attorney fees.

In 2009, the county paid a law firm representing Joe D’Amico, president of Security Services Northwest, $41,515 to satisfy a records act claim against the county stemming from a battle over permits for his security company. The suit became known as “Pizzagate,” because some of the records revealed the type of pizza that County Commissioner David Sullivan liked to order. That fee included any penalty to the county and reimbursement of attorney fees for D’Amico, Morley said.

D’Amico had asked for phone records in an effort to establish whether commissioners were communicating with a hearings examiner over a lawsuit he bought against the county about his business.

In 2017, the county agreed to pay longtime records requester Mike Belenski $150,000. In that suit, the county also agree to implement measures intended to provide greater online transparency, including hiring a full-time public records administrator.

In addition to the $150,000, the county paid an outside law firm $84,789 to defend it from 2013 to 2017, Morley said.