A Spokane man is suing the city of Woodland for allegedly violating the state’s Public Records Act by overcharging for records he requested and requiring full payment in advance.
Stephen Kirby, who owns Tikor Consulting, had sought information from multiple governments about how much they were being charged by outside attorneys for their work, said his attorney, Michael Whipple of the Spokane-based Whipple Law Group. Kirby, whose aim was to do a public service to help municipalities shop for private attorneys, requested invoices from the cities.
Whipple said between 90 and 95 percent of the cities responded properly to the public records request — but Woodland was not among them.
Among other things, Kirby is seeking reasonable attorney fees and penalties of $100 a day starting March 9, 2015. The $100-a-day penalty would amount to about $39,000 as of Thursday’s filing date of the lawsuit in Clark County Superior Court.
Woodland Interim City Administrator Denny Richards declined to comment on the case Tuesday.
According to Kirby’s complaint, he mailed a public records request to the city on March 2, 2015, asking for specific records. On March 10, 2015, he received a response from Woodland Clerk-Treasurer Mari Ripp stating that the records didn’t exist electronically and that it would cost $30 for every 15 minutes it took to scan them. Estimating that the request would take at least 30 minutes of staff time to fulfill, Ripp said Kirby must pay the entire $60 in advance before Woodland would begin producing the records, according to court documents.
When Kirby asked how the city calculated the charge for scanning the requested documents, Ripp cited the cost rate (which included salary and benefits) for the staff person who performed the work, Whipple said.
Eight violations alleged
The lawsuit contends the city violated the state’s Public Records Act (RCW 42.56 and WAC 44-14) in the following ways:
• The city charged Kirby an “objectively unreasonable amount” of $120 per hour.
• In addition to the cost of preparing the records, the city charged Kirby for time related to communicating with him regarding clarifications and cost estimates.
• The city charged Kirby more than 15 cents per page without providing required statements demonstrating how the costs were computed.
• The city included employee benefits and salaries in its cost assessment.
• The city required prepayment for the entire estimated cost rather than the maximum allowable 10 percent.
• The city failed to provide a reasonable estimate of the time it would require to respond to the public records request.
• The city failed to provide the requested records. It provided claim vouchers with the attorneys’ names, payment amounts and dates paid rather than actual invoices.
• The city charged Kirby for converting public records to electronic format when the records were already available to the city electronically.
Tuesday, Whipple said he was pleased with how well most of the other jurisdictions had fulfilled Kirby’s public records requests.
“We don’t do this willy-nilly. We don’t do this to cause hassles,” he said. “When they’re not (in compliance), we think it’s a public duty to bring it to their attention. If we can change the policy, that’s the goal.”
Ripp, who has worked for the city for 26 years, was named “Clerk of the Year” last month by the Washington Municipal Clerks Association out of more than 280 eligible clerks statewide.
