Editorial: Watchdogs rewarded

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Tom Thiersch and Michael Belenski have sat patiently for years, listening to and watching what government officials say and do.

Over those years, they’ve challenged public officials to take action in public and be accountable to the public.

In the past two months, all those years of sitting, listening and filing requests under the state Open Public Records Act and state Open Public Meetings Act have paid off for the watchdogs.

Thiersch, a member of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, won a $18,000 judgment in February for having been vigilant in 2015 and catching Jefferson County Public Utility District Commissioner Wayne King specifically violating the state Open Public Meetings Act.

While PUD attorneys argued that no harm was intended or done, Thiersch laid out email evidence that showed King had had training in the law and knew it but ignored it, at one point calling the law of which Thiersch reminded him “an opinion.”

(PUD Commissioner Ken Collins and former Commissioner Barney Burke had nothing to do with the complaint and weren’t named.)

While Thiersch filed the case in November 2016 and resolved it in a matter of two months, Belenski’s complaint has been dragging out for almost seven years. He made a request for copies of the county’s internet access logs in 2010 and had asked for some 300 million log entries.

It should be noted that it is requests like Belenski’s that have been daunting to government officials and have prompted some to call for changes in the law. Some might say that the request was a form of harassment. In a previous open records request, Belenski succeeded in bringing failures of officials to light.

After years of legal wrangling, Belenski won a victory when the state Supreme Court remanded the case back to Clallam County Superior Court last year to decide on any penalties the county should pay for not fulfilling Belenski’s original requests. As County Administrator Philip Morley acknowledged Monday, the penalties could have mounted to millions of dollars.

Ultimately, the county and Belenski settled the case on Monday. And the county agreed to collect the internet access logs, so that people can see what county employees are doing. The county also has agreed to hire a full-time public records administrator.

And finally, the county has agreed to pay $150,000 to Belenski and his experts, which included Thiersch, to settle the claims.

Say what you will about Thiersch and Belenski and their pursuit of access to public records. Call them frivolous and petty, if you want.

But the outcome of all those watchdog victories should make Jefferson County public agencies more transparent and records more accessible to the public that pays the bills.