Tacoma News Tribune's Peter Callaghan column on Supreme Court's latest decision

I had no idea Peter's wife is Armenian ! ...

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/columnists/callaghan/story/600341.html

Disclosure law violations hit taxpayers twice
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PETER CALLAGHAN; THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Published: 01/20/09 12:05 am
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I always felt a kinship with Armen Yousoufian, and not because he and my wife have Armenian heritage. That only helped me pronounce his name.
Instead we both spent too many years trying to pry information out of government agencies on the decision to subsidize and build a stadium for the Seattle Seahawks.
The difference is, he was successful. Eventually. It took him three years to get documents from King County that were used to rationalize the decision to demolish the Kingdome and build what is now called Qwest Field.
He then spent eight years, nearly half a million dollars and 5,000 hours of his time to get the courts to order King County to pay a price. After his second trip to the state Supreme Court, the Vashon Island resident appears on the cusp of winning his legal fees plus a huge penalty all because the county, as Justice Richard Sanders wrote in his majority opinion, “repeatedly deceived and misinformed Yousoufian for years.”The case must still return to Superior Court. But that judge will have to follow the top court’s directive to substantially increase the penalty. When it’s finished, King County will set a record for disclosure law fines, likely in the $500,000 range.
All could have been avoided in May 1997 had the county simply complied, something the original trial judge said could have happened within five days. All Yousoufian wanted was the feasibility studies that claimed the Kingdome was losing money, that it couldn’t be economically rehabilitated and that a new stadium was the only way to keep the Seahawks.
Had the documents come out before the vote, citizens would have seen that the results were all but dictated by Allen’s people, who wanted the studies to back a new stadium over a renovated Kingdome.
But none of the documents was produced in time for the election, however, an election won narrowly by stadium supporters. And county officials repeatedly said documents didn’t exist or weren’t held by the county.
Only after Yousoufian filed suit in March 2000 did the bulk of the documents get released. At trial there was little sympathy for the county. Neither the Court of Appeals nor the Supreme Court found much reason to be lenient.
The only real legal issue has been how much would this negligence cost the county. Since the disclosure act is enforced only by private lawsuits, it calls for large penalties and court costs in order to encourage compliance.
But it took two trips through the court system for Yousoufian to get enough to cover his costs and provide an adequate slap to King County.
While it feels like a victory, and it certainly is for Yousoufian, it might not be so thrilling for taxpayers. They were denied information that might have convinced them to oppose the stadium funding. They then paid for King County’s effort to deny public disclosure of public documents and the county’s legal defense of the indefensible. And now they get to pay the cost of Yousoufian’s legal victory.
And the elected officials and bureaucrats responsible? From County Executive Ron Sims down to the staffers who failed to produce records, nearly all are safely employed and will pay no price for a blatant abuse of the law.
There’s this final note. The Supreme Court has repeated that heavy penalties are vital to the disclosure law.
“… proper deterrence for King County and others clearly requires a penalty at the high end of the penalty range,” Sanders wrote last week.
Yet one public agency essentially is immune from such threats. In its lease with Seahawks owner Paul Allen, the football stadium authority gave him the right to challenge any release of documents. And if the authority ever faces penalties for withholding documents that Allen wants kept secret, Allen has to agree to reimburse them.
So much for deterrence.
Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657
peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com
blogs.thenewstribune.com/politics