State Lawmakers Work To Fix Tiny Portion of Failed Public Records Act
A Bad Idea
January 23, 2017
Chronicle
opinion
(OLYMPIA,
WA.) -- Instead of scrapping Washington State's permanently flawed,
badly worded, ill-conceived and utterly failed Wash. State Public
Records Act (PRA) and starting over to create a law that is
sensible
and actually works - like many other states have on their books -
members of the state legislature are tinkering around the edges
trying to put a band-aid on this monstrosity.
Putting
a band-aid on the PRA is like trying to control a junkie's intake of
smack by asking him politely to not use so much black tar heroin on
Wednesdays and Fridays.
It's
a dumb idea, ill-conceived and probably won't amount to a rat fart
in a windstorm in terms of an adult solution to this failed
law's weaknesses.
But
what are you gonna do when the state legislature is owned in large part
by powerful
lobbyists for the dead tree newspaper industry? The very industry
that created this monster back in the 1970's to suit and please
itself.
Every
time sensible legislators try to fix this dud - even to a minor
degree - the dead tree folks kill it in Olympia.
Here's
what failure year after year gets you
The
complete failure of government to fix a broken law like this decade
after decade - and thus help the common people who are being
brutalized by it - is precisely why Donald Trump is being inaugurated
as the nation's 45th President today.
Governments,
at all levels, seem to be broken. They are not smart or effective
and are always owned by those with the largest dollars.
So
this time around in the Big
Show on The Beltway the great unwashed -
who've been angry as hell about that for a very long time - sent the
powers that be in Washington a hand grenade for an answer in a
narcissistic, fully unqualified, nasty-tempered, pu**ie grabbing,
women hating, teenage tweeting and abnormal-as-hell 74-year old
hairspray king to let them know in a huge way they are very pissed
off.
But
the fact remains that some Washington state legislators are at least
making an attempt to take a step forward on fixing this broken,
fully-FUBAR public records act so we suppose they should get at
least a thank you for that.
Thanks.
Sort of.
The BIg Fix
Two
state lawmakers - Rep. Terry Nealey, R-Dayton, and Rep. Joan McBride,
D-Kirkland - are working on PRA legislation that is at least designed
to try and strike some sort of a balance between keeping the public
informed and managing the increasingly god-awful costs of responding
to bloated records requests from every nut case, crank,
malcontent
and sociopath in the state who learned a long time ago how easy it is
to abuse this law in order to:
~ Stalk and terrorize innocent families for years
on end without one
arrest. One
Snohomish County woman this publication interviewed at length said she
and her
family have been stalked, humiliated, had their reputations dragged
through the mud innumerable times and have been terrorized by a nut
case using the PRA as a weapon for the past half dozen years and
despite the fact
there are plenty of laws on the books - including an anti-cyber
stalking law - this stalker, who gives a Bronx cheer to the law every
day (thanks to the PRA and media outlets who refuse to report
such stories) has never been arrested, never been cited,
never
been prosecuted, never did a day in jail and the abuse and harassment
to this family continues as this story is written.
~ Punish small communities by trying to bankrupt
them with insanely
expensive PRA requests
~ Make a financial killing with the law -
enough to retire on in some
cases - because the legislature in its infinite stupidity built into
the monster a financial insensitive for people to file lawsuits over
the thing and rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars....like the
pure-as driven snow Seattle Times did not long ago. That's
right. The always trustworthy Seattle Times raped all
you taxpayers to the tune of over $600,000. That's a pretty penny
that won't be going into education (or anywhere else) any time soon
because it is money that is gone forever -- straight from your pocket
to the Times cash box. Besides
big court awards, there's the huge cost for small towns. Tiny Gold
Bar, Washington alone (blink your eyes on Highway 2 and you've
missed it) dropped $81,000 last year fulfilling public records
requests.
~ Kill unions in this state. Far
right wing whack jobs in the state
have discovered you can use the PRA to kill what is left of organized
labor, which ain't much.
~ Hassle women who get or seek abortions
So
what are Nealy and McBride trying to get done? They're going to
introduce a bill to create create a fee structure for copies of
electronic records. Oh, that's a serious fix all right. The plan is to
discourage the
above mentioned malcontents and psychos from making unnecessary
requests.
Supposedly
having to pay a few cents or a few bucks for a digital file is going
to cure that symptom of this cancer of a law.
Not
even close. When you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars off
just one hit on the PRA is 50-cents or $50 or $150 going to stop you?
No.
That lousy $50 bucks is the cost of entry to a very big lotto win.
Peanuts. Chump change. Cost of doing business.
Right
now the failed PRA prohibits government agencies from charging more
than 15 cents per page for photocopies of public records but there
is no corresponding charge on electronic records, such as emails.
Gosh, what a surprise.
Is
this proposed change to the PRA - if it gets enacted into law and that is a
very big if - anywhere near enough?
No.
Please call Nealy and McBride, thank them for trying to do something in
the
way of a positive fix and ask them for legislation to kill
this five-tailed monster from hell and start over.
Just
remember who the taxpayers sent to the White House today for the
federal government
being such a failure to fix broken stuff like the PRA, NAFTA, job
exportation and more.
You
want the same kind of unqualified hair-sprayed tweety-dud as governor
of this state
next time around?
Story tags: Washington Public
Records Act, (PRA), unions, government, Seattle Times
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