(The Center Square) – The Lake Washington School District’s Public Records Office is refusing to release public records that The Center Square requested, saying the records request is “unreasonably burdensome.”
But other governments released similar records that show how taxpayer money is being spent, and an open government group says it doesn’t believe the request to the school district, which has an annual budget of $793 million, is too broad or vague.
“I’m confused by the public records officer’s response,” wrote George Erb, secretary for the Washington Coalition for Open Government, after The Center Square shared the request and response with him. “The PRO is correct to say that a request for all or substantially all records is insufficient. But your request, though large, did seek specific kinds of records created within a certain time period.”
The Center Square has recently put out records request with several large county, city, and school districts for the following information:
1. All salary data, including individual names, titles, start dates, benefits, overtime and all other payments.
2. All pension data, including individual names, place and date hired, place and date of retirement, annual amount.
3. A check book of expenditures, including date, payee, amount and reason.
4. All travel card and purchase card data, including date, payee, amount and reason.
5. All centrally booked travel or reimbursed expenses, including date, payee, amount and reason.
6. All cashouts of sick leave, vacation leave or any other accruals, including individual name, date, amount and whether the person was separated or terminated.
7. All settlements and liability claims filed against or paid by your agency, including name of payee, amount, employee responsible, incident/reason details and how much was paid (if applicable).
8. All ethics, financial interest disclosure or conflict of interest forms by employees or elected officials.
9. A list of all employees terminated for cause, individual name, title, last salary and reason for termination.
Several entities such as the cities of Seattle and Spokane have complied with requests with similar or identical language and provided records.
The request made to the LWSD was sent out on October 14. State law says a government has five days to respond after receiving a records request.
Seven weeks after the request had been made, LWSD’s Public Records Office wrote in a Dec. 2 email to The Center Square that “your current request is extremely broad and spans multiple categories of records across several years. This makes it difficult to identify specific records without an unreasonably burdensome search.
“Courts and guidance confirm that agencies are not required to fulfill requests that amount to “all records” because such requests do not reasonably describe identifiable records,” the email states further.
Erb wrote in emails that he wasn’t an attorney so could not comment on the legal issues.
LSWD did not respond to The Center Square’s requests for comment.
