(The Center Square) – A new ranking of how state agencies, utilities, school districts and other public agencies respond to public records requests show which ones are most responsive, and which ones have work to do.
“There’s a state legislative committee that’s been compiling this data since 2018. So, we’ve got seven years of data,” said Washington Coalition for Open Government (WashCOG) Secretary George Erb in a Thursday interview with The Center Square.
“We thought it would be a great idea to find out what the average is for five years and find out which agencies are doing a good job of turning around records requests and which ones are not.”
WashCOG calls it their “Winners and Sinners” list.
The list puts the Sumner School District at the very bottom in the five years from 2020 to 2024.
It took about seven months for the district to provide records on average during that time, with 2022 being the worst year, when records were provided on average 396 days after being requested.
“One of the things that we like to look at is, was there anything going on with this agency at the time that it took so long to complete the records requests?” said Erb.
“And so we looked at the Sumner School District, and during the beginning of the five-year period we were looking at, they had a terrible scandal at the high school, with the high school basketball coach allegedly committing sexual abuse with his own players.”
Jacob “Jake” Jackson was sentenced in 2025 to 40 years in prison for sexually abusing teenage students and players. A jury convicted him on 19 counts, including child molestation and child rape, after investigators found he groomed, manipulated, and sexually assaulted eight teenage victims between 2016 and 2022.
“I can’t say that that caused the lengthy records turnaround, but I can tell you that they occurred at the same time,” Erb said.
Access to public records is often the only way to find out how deals are made, including how lawmakers draft legislation and who is influencing or lobbying for and against certain bills.
Through a records request, TCS obtained nearly 1,000 pages of unredacted emails and other communications between the prime sponsor of the income tax (SB 6346) and the office of Attorney General Nick Brown, as plans were made to ensure the public would not have the option for a referendum, and the law would end up at the State Supreme Court.
Winners and sinners
The shortest average turnaround time came from the North City Water District. The public utility in Shoreline responded to records requests in an average of 0.2 days.
Erb noted the utility only gets a handful of requests each year, so they are not overwhelmed with meeting those petitions.
The second fastest agency was NORCOM 911, which handles thousands of requests. Over the five years, NORCOM 911 completed its records requests in an average of 0.9 days.
“Another slowpoke was The Evergreen State College, the public university outside of Olympia. It completed its records requests in an average of 142.9 days,” read WashCOG’s release on the rankings.
Erb said their listing is not meant to suggest that state agencies and other public organizations are intentionally slow walking records requests.
“In terms of reasons why, it’s hard to tell. I mean, it could be, they were reluctant to release the information. It could also be that the public records office is just understaffed. They just don’t have very many people working on it. And so, when they get a large volume of records requests, suddenly they’re underwater, and it takes a while to work their way out,” Erb said.
Others on the “slow to respond” list:
• Washington State Senate averaging 85.1 days to comply with a records request.
• The Department of Children, Youth and Families averaging 88.1 days to comply.
• Bellevue School District, averaging 95.7 days to supply public records.
• Department of Fish and Wildlife, averaging 97.2 days to supply requested records.
• Washington State University, which took 111.6 days on average to supply records.
• Seattle School District, averaging 118.3 days to comply with a records request.
Others topping the list for fast responses:
• Snohomish County 911 supplied records on average in 1.1 days.
• Soos Creek Water and Sewer District took just 1.5 days on average to supply records.
• West Thurston Regional Fire Service Authority averaged 1.7 days to meet a request.
• City of Anacortes supplied records in just two days on average.
Earlier this year, WashCOG lost a lawsuit that hoped to force state lawmakers to release internal legislative records.
The Washington state Court of Appeals in Tacoma ruled that the state Legislature has a “privilege” to withhold internal records from public disclosure.
The appellate judges said the separation of powers doctrine gives state lawmakers a “legislative privilege” that exempts their internal deliberations from the state Public Records Act.
A handful of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have signed WashCOG’s pledge not to involve legislative privilege when reporters or members of the public ask to see their legislative emails and text messages.
The pledge states: “In the interest of public transparency and open government, I instruct the records officer not to invoke a legislative privilege on my behalf when responding to public records requests.”
