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AG to Kirkland on public records: Clean up your act...respectfully speaking, of course

Posted by Scott "The Piper" St. Clair - July 27, 2009

Latest word in the City of Kirkland public-records-access kerfuffle is that the Washington State Attorney General's office has written to the city to "encourage the city to review its form" since it creates "a perception (that) may discourage requesters from submitting requests."
 
Tim Ford, the AG's Open Records Ombudsman, took great pains in the letter to analyze what is required of governments in the state of Washington under the Public Records Act.  He specifically discussed the impropriety of government asking a citizen requester what he or she intended to do with the records, something Kirkland did in its records-request form.
 
Ford went on to make several detailed policy recomendations to the city to help it extricate itself from this morass of its own making. 
 
The good guys win one!
 
The Piper

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