As long as we’re in editorial mode today (go for it ECB), I have to put my two cents in about another matter: The suspect line that’s being peddled by the Washington Department of Transportation that—when they released the alarming viaduct video in the week before the mayoral election—they were simply honoring a public records request.
I’m now officially giving that line “Whopper of the Year.” Again: In response to the accusation that they were moving politically against Mayoral candidate Mike McGinn (which is illegal for a state agency) when they released the video, WSDOT has said they were simply responding to a public records request.
That line is credulously repeated in today’s Seattle Times article (otherwise a good investigative piece that adds onto Erica’s scoop from a few weeks ago documenting the state’s anxiety about—and efforts to counteract—McGinn during the campaign.)
From today’s Seattle Times (bold is mine):
As the campaign remained tight, the state released a computer-generated video made in 2007 that shows large parts of the double-deck viaduct collapsing and crushing cars caught under it.
The video had not been released previously because state officials thought it was too sensational, but it aired on KING-TV on Oct. 25.
McGinn immediately questioned the timing — nine days before the general election.
But Judd and Hammond said the release was in response to a public-disclosure request from an anti-tunnel activist, Elizabeth Campbell.
For the record: Agencies do not make public disclosure requests available to the whole world on their web sites or by releasing the findings to random TV stations. They release the findings to the person or group who made the request.
Perfect example, two weeks before they released the viaduct video to the whole world, they quietly released the results of a different public records request (re: their collaboration with the pro-tunnel Discovery Institute) to the activist group that made the request, Seattle Citizens Against the Tunnel. That request only got attention because Erica found out about it and published an article about it.
I, and every other reporter in town who’s ever done a public records request, knows WSDOT’s explanation is laughable. Yet the line keeps getting repeated (as it is in today’s Seattle Times article) without being questioned.
We’ve questioned it in editorial asides, but it’s time to question this outright whopper in bold: Why was this public records request different from all other public records requests? And why is everyone accepting this excuse?
I have asked WSDOT for an explanation.
The ethics department at the state Attorney General’s office is currently looking into an ethics complaint filed by activist Elizabeth Campbell that the state tried to influence the outcome of Seattle’s mayor’s race.
UPDATE: WSDOT spokesman Lloyd Brown says the “inflammatory” nature of the video made it a “special case.”
Explaining why they put the video on their web site (he couldn’t think of any other examples where they’d treated a public disclosure request this way) he says: “We were looking for an opportunity to explain the document in a way the public would understand what was in the video.”
Brown couldn’t cite any formal WSDOT policy, however, that identifies which public disclosure requests are special cases and which are not. He says WSDOT initially tried to give the video to the Seattle Times, but WSDOT didn’t hear back. KING 5 got wind of this and got the video for themselves.
