Podcasts about public records act

We can think of ethics as the principles that guide our behavior toward making the best choices that contribute to the common good of all. Who decides what's ethical or not? Let's find out from our guest Tom Hood, Executive Director, Mississippi Ethics Commission.What do they do? The Mississippi Ethics Commission has four main areas of authority under four separate laws:The Ethics in Government Law – prohibits public officials and employees from having economic conflicts of interest.The Open Meetings Act – requires governmental boards and commissions to meet in public, unless they enter executive session by following a specific procedure for limited reasons.The Public Records Act – ensures the public can inspect and copy most government documents.The Campaign Finance Law – authorizes the Ethics Commission to issue advisory opinions to candidates about the use of campaign funds.What do they Don't DoUnethical Personal Conduct Criminal Activity ElectionsJudgesGeneral Questions of Government LawLawyer EthicsU.S. House Ethics Committee Chairperson is our own Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., The Ethics Committees are unique among all House and Senate committees in that they are bipartisan committees. On February 3, 1993, the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, issued by the Office of Government Ethics for codification at 5 C.F.R. Part 2635, replaced the many individual agency standard of conduct regulations with a uniform set of standards applicable to all employees of the executive branch.Because they are intended to answer questions about the ethical conduct of more than a million individuals employed by more than 100 different Federal agencies, the Standards of Ethical Conduct are detailed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a surprising turn of events, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer ordered a temporary recess in Alec Baldwin's pretrial hearing. This came after a contentious debate between the prosecution and Baldwin's defense team over redacted documents provided to the defense. "The court is not happy with this," Judge Sommer declared before announcing a one-hour recess, adding, "I'll see what's going to happen." The documents in question were related to an Inspection of Public Records Act request filed by Baldwin's defense team, which they claim included emails and witness statements that were fully redacted. The prosecution countered, stating that the blacked-out portions were communications between prosecutors and paralegals, to which the defense was not entitled.  The motions being heard include critical decisions about what evidence, testimony, and arguments will be permissible in front of the jury. One significant motion filed by Baldwin's legal team sought to exclude his role as a producer from consideration, arguing that it was irrelevant to the allegations of negligence. The prosecution, however, maintained that Baldwin's producer role contributed to his reckless behavior, potentially endangering the safety of others.  In a decisive ruling, Judge Sommer denied the motion to introduce evidence of Baldwin's producer role. "I'm having real difficulty with the state's position that they want to show, as a producer, he didn't follow guidelines and therefore, as an actor, Mr. Baldwin did all these things wrong, resulting in the death of Halyna Hutchins because as a producer he allowed this all to happen," Judge Sommer stated. She further noted that Baldwin was not the sole producer, implying that mentioning his role could unfairly suggest he was the only authority on set. "I'm denying evidence of his status as a producer," she concluded. The judge's rulings on other motions included partial approval regarding Baldwin's prior handling of firearms, allowing photos but excluding instances of him rushing the crew. Additionally, a motion to exclude a defense witness was denied despite the prosecution's claims of late disclosure and lack of pretrial interview opportunities. The court ruled that the witness would be available for a pretrial interview. Court documents shed light on the prosecution's case, portraying Baldwin as the "most experienced member of all the cast and crew," who missed the initial firearms training and was inattentive during a separate session with armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. They allege Baldwin spent the training time on his phone and making videos of himself shooting the gun. As jury selection begins, both sides are keenly aware of the high-profile nature of the case. "Jury selection is important in every case but critically important here," noted Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor. He emphasized the need to screen potential jurors for biases related to gun safety, rights, and celebrity status. Despite the serious charges, Rahmani does not foresee Baldwin being jailed if convicted. "The New Mexico manslaughter statute carries an 18-month maximum sentence, with no minimum," Rahmani explained. He pointed out that Baldwin's defense could argue for leniency by comparing his culpability to that of assistant director Dave Halls, who received probation for his role in the incident. As the trial progresses, the legal strategies and rulings in these preliminary hearings will significantly shape the courtroom dynamics and potential outcomes in this high-stakes case.   Want to listen to ALL of our podcasts AD-FREE? Subscribe through APPLE PODCASTS, and try it for three days free: https://tinyurl.com/ycw626tj Follow Our Other Cases: https://www.truecrimetodaypod.com The latest on The Downfall of Diddy, The Karen Read Trial, Catching the Long Island Serial Killer, Awaiting Admission: BTK's Unconfessed Crimes, Delphi Murders: Inside the Crime, Chad & Lori Daybell, The Murder of Ana Walshe, Alex Murdaugh, Bryan Kohberger, Lucy Letby, Kouri Richins, Malevolent Mormon Mommys, Justice for Harmony Montgomery, The Murder of Stephen Smith, The Murder of Madeline Kingsbury, and much more! Listen at https://www.truecrimetodaypod.com

In a surprising turn of events, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer ordered a temporary recess in Alec Baldwin's pretrial hearing. This came after a contentious debate between the prosecution and Baldwin's defense team over redacted documents provided to the defense. "The court is not happy with this," Judge Sommer declared before announcing a one-hour recess, adding, "I'll see what's going to happen." The documents in question were related to an Inspection of Public Records Act request filed by Baldwin's defense team, which they claim included emails and witness statements that were fully redacted. The prosecution countered, stating that the blacked-out portions were communications between prosecutors and paralegals, to which the defense was not entitled. The motions being heard include critical decisions about what evidence, testimony, and arguments will be permissible in front of the jury. One significant motion filed by Baldwin's legal team sought to exclude his role as a producer from consideration, arguing that it was irrelevant to the allegations of negligence. The prosecution, however, maintained that Baldwin's producer role contributed to his reckless behavior, potentially endangering the safety of others. In a decisive ruling, Judge Sommer denied the motion to introduce evidence of Baldwin's producer role. "I'm having real difficulty with the state's position that they want to show, as a producer, he didn't follow guidelines and therefore, as an actor, Mr. Baldwin did all these things wrong, resulting in the death of Halyna Hutchins because as a producer he allowed this all to happen," Judge Sommer stated. She further noted that Baldwin was not the sole producer, implying that mentioning his role could unfairly suggest he was the only authority on set. "I'm denying evidence of his status as a producer," she concluded. The judge's rulings on other motions included partial approval regarding Baldwin's prior handling of firearms, allowing photos but excluding instances of him rushing the crew. Additionally, a motion to exclude a defense witness was denied despite the prosecution's claims of late disclosure and lack of pretrial interview opportunities. The court ruled that the witness would be available for a pretrial interview. Court documents shed light on the prosecution's case, portraying Baldwin as the "most experienced member of all the cast and crew," who missed the initial firearms training and was inattentive during a separate session with armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. They allege Baldwin spent the training time on his phone and making videos of himself shooting the gun. As jury selection begins, both sides are keenly aware of the high-profile nature of the case. "Jury selection is important in every case but critically important here," noted Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor. He emphasized the need to screen potential jurors for biases related to gun safety, rights, and celebrity status. Despite the serious charges, Rahmani does not foresee Baldwin being jailed if convicted. "The New Mexico manslaughter statute carries an 18-month maximum sentence, with no minimum," Rahmani explained. He pointed out that Baldwin's defense could argue for leniency by comparing his culpability to that of assistant director Dave Halls, who received probation for his role in the incident. Want to listen to ALL of our podcasts AD-FREE? Subscribe through APPLE PODCASTS, and try it for three days free: https://tinyurl.com/ycw626tj Follow Our Other Cases: https://www.truecrimetodaypod.com The latest on The Downfall of Diddy, The Karen Read Trial, Catching the Long Island Serial Killer, Awaiting Admission: BTK's Unconfessed Crimes, Delphi Murders: Inside the Crime, Chad & Lori Daybell, The Murder of Ana Walshe, Alex Murdaugh, Bryan Kohberger, Lucy Letby, Kouri Richins, Malevolent Mormon Mommys, Justice for Harmony Montgomery, The Murder of Stephen Smith, The Murder of Madeline Kingsbury, and much more! Listen at https://www.truecrimetodaypod.com

In a surprising turn of events, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer ordered a temporary recess in Alec Baldwin's pretrial hearing. This came after a contentious debate between the prosecution and Baldwin's defense team over redacted documents provided to the defense. "The court is not happy with this," Judge Sommer declared before announcing a one-hour recess, adding, "I'll see what's going to happen." The documents in question were related to an Inspection of Public Records Act request filed by Baldwin's defense team, which they claim included emails and witness statements that were fully redacted. The prosecution countered, stating that the blacked-out portions were communications between prosecutors and paralegals, to which the defense was not entitled.  The motions being heard include critical decisions about what evidence, testimony, and arguments will be permissible in front of the jury. One significant motion filed by Baldwin's legal team sought to exclude his role as a producer from consideration, arguing that it was irrelevant to the allegations of negligence. The prosecution, however, maintained that Baldwin's producer role contributed to his reckless behavior, potentially endangering the safety of others.  In a decisive ruling, Judge Sommer denied the motion to introduce evidence of Baldwin's producer role. "I'm having real difficulty with the state's position that they want to show, as a producer, he didn't follow guidelines and therefore, as an actor, Mr. Baldwin did all these things wrong, resulting in the death of Halyna Hutchins because as a producer he allowed this all to happen," Judge Sommer stated. She further noted that Baldwin was not the sole producer, implying that mentioning his role could unfairly suggest he was the only authority on set. "I'm denying evidence of his status as a producer," she concluded. The judge's rulings on other motions included partial approval regarding Baldwin's prior handling of firearms, allowing photos but excluding instances of him rushing the crew. Additionally, a motion to exclude a defense witness was denied despite the prosecution's claims of late disclosure and lack of pretrial interview opportunities. The court ruled that the witness would be available for a pretrial interview. Court documents shed light on the prosecution's case, portraying Baldwin as the "most experienced member of all the cast and crew," who missed the initial firearms training and was inattentive during a separate session with armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. They allege Baldwin spent the training time on his phone and making videos of himself shooting the gun. As jury selection begins, both sides are keenly aware of the high-profile nature of the case. "Jury selection is important in every case but critically important here," noted Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor. He emphasized the need to screen potential jurors for biases related to gun safety, rights, and celebrity status. Despite the serious charges, Rahmani does not foresee Baldwin being jailed if convicted. "The New Mexico manslaughter statute carries an 18-month maximum sentence, with no minimum," Rahmani explained. He pointed out that Baldwin's defense could argue for leniency by comparing his culpability to that of assistant director Dave Halls, who received probation for his role in the incident. As the trial progresses, the legal strategies and rulings in these preliminary hearings will significantly shape the courtroom dynamics and potential outcomes in this high-stakes case.   Want to listen to ALL of our podcasts AD-FREE? Subscribe through APPLE PODCASTS, and try it for three days free: https://tinyurl.com/ycw626tj Follow Our Other Cases: https://www.truecrimetodaypod.com The latest on The Downfall of Diddy, The Karen Read Trial, Catching the Long Island Serial Killer, Awaiting Admission: BTK's Unconfessed Crimes, Delphi Murders: Inside the Crime, Chad & Lori Daybell, The Murder of Ana Walshe, Alex Murdaugh, Bryan Kohberger, Lucy Letby, Kouri Richins, Malevolent Mormon Mommys, Justice for Harmony Montgomery, The Murder of Stephen Smith, The Murder of Madeline Kingsbury, and much more! Listen at https://www.truecrimetodaypod.com

Many of the hundreds of bills passed by the Rhode Island General Assembly each year raise issues involving civil liberties. That's why Rhode Island ACLU executive director Steve Brown pays close attention to the legislature. As is often the case, the results from Smith Hill this year are something of a mixed bag. Lawmakers approved the first significant overhaul since 1976 of the Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights, or LEOBOR. But an attempt to update the law governing open records, the Access to Public Records Act, fell flat in the face of opposition from state government. So how did lawmakers do in conducting the public's business? What would it take to make the General Assembly more accountable to the public it serves? And how is the outlook for the rule of law when millions of Americans dispute the winner of the 2020 presidential race? This week on Political Roundtable, I'm going in-depth with the head of the Rhode Island ACLU, Steve Brown.

Opinion: Government records belong to the public. Mark Harmsworth of the Washington Policy Center believes the legislature needs to pass clear, unambiguous legislation that clarifies the legislature is subject to the Public Records Act. https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/opinion/opinion-government-records-belong-to-the-public/ #opinion #columns #commentary #MarkHarmsworth #WashingtonPolicyCenter #WashingtonStateLegislature #PublicRecordsAct #letters #emails #phonelogs #meetingminutes #WashingtonStateSupremeCourt #Washingtonstate #VancouverWa #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

A conversation about Miquel Arias' effort to weaponize the City Attorney's Office turns into straight answers from District Attorney Smittcamp. Unworried by the petty ‘Lawfare,' the question is asked: Does using the City Attorney to facilitate a city council member's personal political ambition run afoul of the very laws at issue in the councilman's Public Records Act demand?    KMJ's Afternoon Drive with Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson    Weekdays 2-6PM Pacific on News/Talk 580 & 105.9 KMJ    Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and X    Listen to past episodes at kmjnow.com    Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, or Amazon Music     Contact   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A conversation about Miquel Arias' effort to weaponize the City Attorney's Office turns into straight answers from District Attorney Smittcamp. Unworried by the petty ‘Lawfare,' the question is asked: Does using the City Attorney to facilitate a city council member's personal political ambition run afoul of the very laws at issue in the councilman's Public Records Act demand?    KMJ's Afternoon Drive with Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson    Weekdays 2-6PM Pacific on News/Talk 580 & 105.9 KMJ    Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and X    Listen to past episodes at kmjnow.com    Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, or Amazon Music     Contact   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When reporters are working on important stories, they often use Rhode Island's Access for Public Records Act, or APRA. It gives them the ability to ask for government emails, data sets, or other documents. But APRA isn't perfect. So, there's a bill before the General Assembly to make it stronger. Ed talks with Colleen Cronin, a reporter who covers environmental issues for ecoRI, and John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, to learn more. Tips and ideas? Email us at rinews@globe.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Over the last 52 years, watchdogs argue that the Public Records Act has lost some teeth. When it was passed in 1972, there were only 10 exemptions for when records wouldn't be made publicly available - mainly related to privacy. As of last year, there are more than 650 exemption rules for public records requests.

Attorney Harold Freiman from Lozano and Smith joins to discuss the laws and rights of 1st Amendment auditors, Public Records Act, and office building security measures and strategies.

The Providence Journal's Amy Russo, The Boston Globe's Ed Fitzpatrick, and Political Contributor Scott MacKay join Moderator Jim Hummel to discuss Pete Buttigieg's visit to the Washington Bridge, noise cameras proposed in Providence, a bill related to the Access to Public Records Act, and walking back some changes to PVD Fest.

On this week's episode of Inside Olympia....It's been more than half a century since Washington voters approved the Public Records Act. Now a new report from the Washington Coalition for Open Government warns the spirit and letter of that law are being undermined. We talk with the Mike Fancher, the nonprofit's president about recommendations for strengthening it.

We discuss how to avoid appellate sanctions, and an unusually successful motion for reconsideration:$50k sanctions against appellant for blowing appellate procedure.Motion for reconsideration was untimely, but righteous. Trial judge did not take the Court of Appeal's hint, so writ issued. (But the trial judge was right to let the writ issue.)Anti-SLAPPs don't require a line-by-line list of allegations like regular strike motions. But there's a split on this.Do you need appellate specialization credits? Maybe not as many as you think if you use Lisa Perrochet's tip.We also discuss a case on the Racial Justice Act, a rare case reversed for lack of substantial evidence, and a Public Records Act case.Appellate Specialist Jeff Lewis' biography, LinkedIn profile, and Twitter feed.Appellate Specialist Tim Kowal's biography, LinkedIn profile, Twitter feed, and YouTube page.Sign up for Not To Be Published, Tim Kowal's weekly legal update, or view his blog of recent cases.The California Appellate Law Podcast thanks Casetext for sponsoring the podcast. Listeners receive a discount on Casetext Basic Research at casetext.com/CALP. The co-hosts, Jeff and Tim, were also invited to try Casetext's newest technology, CoCounsel, the world's first AI legal assistant. You can discover CoCounsel for yourself with a demo and free trial at casetext.com/CoCounsel.Other items discussed in the episode:Attorney who ignored appellate rules hit with $50k in sanctions in Mandir, Inc. v. Tiwari (D4d3 Mar. 27, 2023 No. G060437) (nonpub. opn.)Denying an untimely but meritorious motion for reconsideration was reversible error  Contreras v. Superior Court (Champion Dodge, LLC) (D2d5 Feb. 16, 2024 No. B331737) [nonpub. opn.]Splitting from SLAPP precedent, appellate court holds you don't have to do a line-by-line list of allegations challenged in an anti-SLAPP motion Miszkewycz v. County of Placer (D3 Jan. 25, 2024 No. C095426).Racial Justice Act motion requires case-specific facts, not mere statistical analysis Austin v. Superior Court (D2d2 Jan. 25, 2024 No. E080939)Read the full article at the KowalLawGroup.com blog here

lovethylawyer.comA transcript of this podcast is available at lovethylawyer.com.Go to https://www.lovethylawyer.com/blog for transcripts. In collaboration with the Alameda County Bar Association, Love Thy Lawyer presents an interview with: BART Attorney Byron TomaSan Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District – Office of the General Counsel (Department Head: Matthew Burrows) Staff Attorney, January 2008 to present Advising various government clients, including Media Affairs, Marketing, Expressive Activities Permitting, Planning, Engineering and Operations, Office of Civil Rights, Real Estate, “Art at BART,” Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority, the Office of the Independent Police Auditor, Police Department, Public Works Construction and Procurement Contracting. Appearing, as needed, on Pitchess Motions and Workplace Violence Restraining Orders. Working on issues related to CEQA/NEPA, the Political Reform Act, Govt. Code Section 1090, conflicts of interest, incompatible offices/activities, Public Records Act, Records Retention, Privacy Rights and the Brown Act. Supervision of law clerks and post-graduate volunteers. Santa Clara University School of Law Adjunct Lecturer, Externship Program, May of 2016 to May 2019 Serving within the Legal Externship Program to review student externship placement summaries, student diaries, assignments, and other administrative duties as required by the position. Alameda City Attorney's Office (Department Head: Teresa L. Highsmith) Assistant City Attorney II, July 2006 to November 2007 Advising various government clients, including the Chuck Corica Golf Course, Recreation and Parks Department, Information Services Department, Alameda Free Libraries, Finance Department, Housing Authority, Development Services Department, Community Improvement Commission (Redevelopment Commission), Alameda Reuse & Redevelopment Authority, 5150 Gun Retention cases. Supervision of law clerks and volunteers. Marin County Counsel's Office (Department Head: Patrick K. Faulkner) Deputy County Counsel III, December 2000 to July 4, 2006 Sonoma County Counsel's Office (Department Head: Steven M. Woodside) Deputy County Counsel IV, April 1987 to December 2000  Alameda County Bar AssociationThe Alameda County Bar Association (ACBA) is a professional membership association for lawyers and other me Louis Goodman www.louisgoodman.comhttps://www.lovethylawyer.com/510.582.9090Music: Joel Katz, Seaside Recording, MauiTech: Bryan Matheson, Skyline Studios, OaklandAudiograms: Paul Roberts louis@lovethylawyer.com

SERIES 2 EPISODE 92: BULLETIN EDITION/COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN BULLETIN: (1:40) In literally his last 24 hours in office, Donald Trump ordered a 10-inch thick binder of raw, ultra-secret intelligence about Russia interference, spying, and disinformation in this country - and American means of uncovering it - brought to the White House. He began to declassify it over the objection of every intelligence chief. His chief of staff Mark Meadows summoned disgraced ex-journalist John Solomon to the White House and handed him countless pages of the vital classified intelligence and a Solomon staffer "was even allowed to leave the White House with the declassified records in a paper bag.” The original unredacted binder, containing thousands of pages, has never been recovered in the nearly three years since it was last seen in Trump's hands. This comes from a new report this morning from CNN - startling even in the context of Trump's previously revealed treachery, treason, and intelligence theft. The implications of the report are obvious: Trump may still have the binder. Or he may have given it to someone else (the report implicates his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows). Or he may have given it to a foreign country. Or sold it. And perhaps more importantly: WHAT did Trump hope to achieve by giving its contents to John Solomon the night before Joe Biden's 2021 inauguration? Solomon was literally stopped as he scanned the documents, presumably for publication, by White House lawyers who demanded he return what Trump had given him. Was Trump hoping that the small percentage of documents that pertained to "Operation Crossfire Hurricane" would serve as a pretext for him to act to STOP the Biden Inauguration by using the Insurrection Act, or by other pretext, and with the military's help? Is this nightmare of Trump stealing thousands of pages of intelligence about Russia's perfidy in our country - its violation of our national borders - its virtual invasion of our country, simply the preface for a darker plot in which Trump would have used the material as an excuse to illegally remain in power? Does he still have the binder? Does he still have the plan? (14:35) SPECIAL COMMENT: After spending their lives as bullies, Donald John Trump and Rudolph William Louis Giuliani will go out as cowards. Guess who did NOT testify yesterday as testimony ended in the Ruby Freeman/Shay Moss/Rudy Giuliani case? Yes, the defendant, who had promised after court Monday and Tuesday that he would testify, prove that he was telling the truth about them, and that they were lying about him. Instead, his lawyer was reduced to painting Giuliani as a pathetic "flat-earther" who could never process reality. Giuliani said nothing as the case concluded and the jury deliberated for three hours what he should make out the check for - and they didn't reach a conclusion. When it takes jurors more than one day to decide how much money you owe the people you lied about, guess what: you're going to owe the people you lied about… eleventy billion dollars. It has been quite the week for Trumpian cowardice, led by Trump himself, because if the whole Giuliani "I'll prove I'm right" posturing sounds familiar, Trump did the SAME THING this week. He vowed to tell the truth – under oath - about the New York Business Fraud judge and the clerk and the attorney general and then suddenly, he vanished. Cowardice was on sale at popular prices in Trump-land this week. In ATLANTA yesterday the letters of apology required for the plea deals for Trump 19 confessed conspirators Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesbro were obtained through a Public Records Act motion and combined they stretched to just 26 words. The importance of Giuliani and Trump wimping out is that it underscores that when the spit hits the fan, the bullies ARE the first to run. The lesson in this is simple: hit them. Hit them every day. Hit them with every lawsuit, every indictment, every protest, every public mockery, every embarrassment. Hit them with everything you have, every day, for the rest of their lives. Because what Trump proved by NOT being in a New York courtroom Monday, and what Giuliani proved by squirming at the defense table yesterday, is that you CAN break them. Both of them. Maybe not all at once, maybe not permanently. But they cannot bullshit their way out of EVERYTHING. ALSO: You'll never believe how bad Vivek Ramaswamy's CNN ratings were. Or Charles Barkley's. And guess what else is back? Cajun Congressman Clay Higgins' "Ghost Buses" delusion. Except now they're MISSING! Complete with an interview by delusional ex-reporter Lara Logan. And her show literally opens with video of Logan playing in traffic. B-Block (36:53) IN SPORTS: Gene Carr, "The New Kid In Town," and Ken MacKenzie of the 1962 Mets, in memoriam (42:24) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Elon Musk says an anti-fraud law is a violation of the 1st Amendment. Kevin McCarthy puts the artificial in Artificial Intelligence. And what kind of act could the New York GOP find to follow George Santos? How about a registered Democrat whose name is spelled Nazi - only with an "M." C-Block (48:05) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: An extraordinary Minnesota rescue is in danger of losing everything: 9 dogs and 130 more animals from Emus to Silky Chickens. (49:10) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Man versus machine, reduced to Man versus Medicine Cabinet: "Nine Needles." And man versus transportation, reduced to mice: "The Mouse Who Went To The Country."  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 91: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: After spending their lives as bullies, Donald John Trump and Rudolph William Louis Giuliani will go out as cowards. Guess who did NOT testify yesterday as testimony ended in the Ruby Freeman/Shay Moss/Rudy Giuliani case? Yes, the defendant, who had promised after court Monday and Tuesday that he would testify, prove that he was telling the truth about them, and that they were lying about him. Instead, his lawyer was reduced to painting Giuliani as a pathetic "flat-earther" who could never process reality. Giuliani said nothing as the case concluded and the jury deliberated for three hours what he should make out the check for - and they didn't reach a conclusion. When it takes jurors more than one day to decide how much money you owe the people you lied about, guess what: you're going to owe the people you lied about… eleventy billion dollars. It has been quite the week for Trumpian cowardice, led by Trump himself, because if the whole Giuliani "I'll prove I'm right" posturing sounds familiar, Trump did the SAME THING this week. He vowed to tell the truth – under oath - about the New York Business Fraud judge and the clerk and the attorney general and then suddenly, he vanished. Cowardice was on sale at popular prices in Trump-land this week. In ATLANTA yesterday the letters of apology required for the plea deals for Trump 19 confessed conspirators Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesbro were obtained through a Public Records Act motion and combined they stretched to just 26 words. The importance of Giuliani and Trump wimping out is that it underscores that when the spit hits the fan, the bullies ARE the first to run. The lesson in this is simple: hit them. Hit them every day. Hit them with every lawsuit, every indictment, every protest, every public mockery, every embarrassment. Hit them with everything you have, every day, for the rest of their lives. Because what Trump proved by NOT being in a New York courtroom Monday, and what Giuliani proved by squirming at the defense table yesterday, is that you CAN break them. Both of them. Maybe not all at once, maybe not permanently. But they cannot bullshit their way out of EVERYTHING. ALSO: You'll never believe how bad Vivek Ramaswamy's CNN ratings were. Or Charles Barkley's. And guess what else is back? Cajun Congressman Clay Higgins' "Ghost Buses" delusion. Except now they're MISSING! Complete with an interview by delusional ex-reporter Lara Logan. And her show literally opens with video of Logan playing in traffic. B-Block (23:48) IN SPORTS: Gene Carr, "The New Kid In Town," and Ken MacKenzie of the 1962 Mets, in memoriam (29:19) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Elon Musk says an anti-fraud law is a violation of the 1st Amendment. Kevin McCarthy puts the artificial in Artificial Intelligence. And what kind of act could the New York GOP find to follow George Santos? How about a registered Democrat whose name is spelled Nazi - only with an "M." C-Block (35:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: An extraordinary Minnesota rescue is in danger of losing everything: 9 dogs and 130 more animals from Emus to Silky Chickens. (36:05) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Man versus machine, reduced to Man versus Medicine Cabinet: "Nine Needles." And man versus transportation, reduced to mice: "The Mouse Who Went To The Country."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Photo: No known restrictions on publication. @Batchelorshow #POTUS: Mentioning the Public Records Act that does not apply to the Trump indictment. Richard Epstein, Hoover Institution.chelorshow

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Wednesday, May 17th, 2023. Concordis Education Partners: Classical Christian education has reminded us to aim education at truth, but the trivium has been used as a formula rather than a way of training students in discernment. To teach well, you must coach. Concordis Foundation is offering their third annual BOOT CAMP – a faculty summit – July 11-13th in Moscow, Idaho. This is a three-day intensive teaching training where you learn to coach students, using the trivium, so that you can meet students at all learning levels. Learn more at concordispartners.com https://www.dailywire.com/news/tsa-rolls-out-facial-recognition-technology-test-at-several-major-airports TSA Rolls Out Facial Recognition Technology Test At Several Major Airports The Transportation Security Administration is testing the use of facial recognition technology at airports across the nation, a move that the federal agency claims will help employees more easily identify travelers. Passengers may soon find themselves in a security screening line where they are asked to place their identification into a slot and look into a camera, after which a small screen will take their picture and flash the words “photo complete,” permitting the traveler to continue through the security process without handing their identification to an employee. The technology is currently in use at 16 airports throughout the country, such as those in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City, according to a report from the Associated Press. Passengers are allowed to opt out of the pilot program conducted by the TSA, which is a branch of the Department of Homeland Security. TSA employees in the security lines with the technology, which examines whether the identification is real and whether the identification belongs to the traveler, will nevertheless be present to ensure that the system reaches correct conclusions. The test of the technology comes despite a February letter from five members of the Senate, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who expressed concern over reports that the system could be implemented across the United States as soon as this year if deemed successful. The lawmakers contended that facial recognition technology “represents a risk to civil liberties and privacy rights.” Federal entities already leverage facial recognition technology in various capacities despite the privacy and security concerns: a report published last year by the Government Accountability Office found that 18 out of 24 agencies reported using facial recognition systems in fiscal year 2020, largely for computer access and law enforcement activities, while 14 out of 42 agencies that employ law enforcement officers reported using the technology in criminal investigations. Americans broadly support the “widespread use of facial recognition technology” by police officers who utilize the systems for law enforcement purposes, according to a survey from Pew Research Center, in which 27% of respondents said the policy was a “bad idea” and 46% said the policy was a “good idea.” Other state and local governments have indeed banned biometric recognition technology. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit last year against Google and Meta for breaches of state laws which prohibit technology firms from using data such as iris scans, fingerprints, voiceprints, or records of hand and face geometry for commercial purposes without permission. https://www.theepochtimes.com/anheuser-busch-announces-changes-company-amid-bud-light-boycott_5266255.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=BonginoReport Anheuser-Busch Makes Changes to Company Amid Bud Light Boycott Anheuser-Busch revealed that it is making attempts to change its marketing structure in the midst of a backlash after Bud Light produced a can featuring a transgender activist’s face for a social media promotion. While the firm did not make mention of the controversy and boycott, a spokesperson for the brewing giant told Fox2Now in St. Louis that it held a meeting in the city and that “we have communicated some next steps with our internal teams and wholesaler partners.” “First, we made it clear that the safety and welfare of our employees and our partners is our top priority,” the company spokesperson said before adding that a new executive was tapped to head a marketing division. “Todd Allen was appointed Vice President of Bud Light added the spokesperson. “Third, we made some adjustments to streamline the structure of our marketing function to reduce layers so that our most senior marketers are more closely connected to every aspect of our brands activities. These steps will help us maintain focus on the things we do best: brewing great beer for all consumers, while always making a positive impact in our communities and on our country.” For the past month and a half, Bud Light’s sales have taken a nosedive after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a video with the namesake can on social media, writing “#budlightpartner” in the caption. That led many to believe the light beer was officially partnering with Mulvaney and would launch a campaign with the activist, who is a biological male. Anheuser-Busch executive Brendan Whitworth said in an April 14 news release that the beverage firm had had no intention of sparking division or wading into a political debate. However, Whitworth made no mention of Mulvaney or the backlash. Weeks later, Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Michel Doukeris told investors in a call that there was no partnership with Mulvaney and that only “one can” was produced with Mulvaney’s face. In a subsequent Financial Times interview, Doukeris claimed that the slumping Bud Light sales were sparked by social media-driven “misinformation.” Continuing, the CEO said that people believed it was a campaign. “It was not: it was one post. It was not an advertisement,” he remarked, contradicting the #budlightpartner hashtag that Mulvaney had written. Sales of the product dropped 26 percent year-over-year in the week ending April 22, according to Bump Williams Consulting based on Nielsen IQ data. Meanwhile, sales of rival beers Coors Light and Miller Light both saw their sales rise by about 10 percent each, according to the data. In the midst of the backlash, two Bud Light executives—Alissa Heinerscheid and Daniel Blake—took a leave of absence, the company said. “Given the circumstances, Alissa has decided to take a leave of absence which we support. Daniel has also decided to take a leave of absence,” the company said last month. https://thepostmillennial.com/seattle-to-pay-out-2-3-million-to-whistleblowers-who-revealed-mayor-engaged-in-chaz-cover-up-by-deleting-texts?utm_campaign=64487 Seattle to pay out $2.3 MILLION to whistleblowers who revealed mayor engaged in CHAZ cover-up by deleting texts The city of Seattle will be forced to pay $2.3 million to settle a lawsuit brought by city employees who were mistreated after they helped reveal that thousands of then-Mayor Jenny Durkan’s text messages had been deleted during the violent riots that rocked the city and the deadly Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in the summer of 2020. A whistleblower complaint by the employees helped to reveal that the texts of Durkan, former Police Chief Carmen Best, Fire Chief Harold Scoggins, and other top officials from the summer of 2020 were intentionally deleted. Though the King County Superior Court case was resolved last month, the terms of Seattle’s settlement with Stacy Irwin and Kimberly Ferreiro weren’t finalized until this week and the details were released to The Seattle Times through a public disclosure request on Friday. The $2.3 million payout is in addition to over $770,000, as of April, spent by the city on attorneys to defend the case, the outlet reported. According to the suit, Irwin and Ferreiro claimed that they resigned as public-records officers in Durkan’s office due to hostile conditions and retaliation. The pair claimed they were “subjected to scorn, ridicule, abuse, and hostility … and the demand to perform illegal acts.” The pair sounded the alarm in 2021 when they complained to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission that the mayor’s office was mishandling records requests. An investigation by the SEEC determined that the mayor’s legal counsel, Michelle Chen, had violated the state Public Records Act by using narrow interpretations of certain requests to exclude Durkan’s missing texts and diverged from best practices by not informing requesters the texts were missing. Under state law, texts and other communications about public businesses by local elected officials must be kept for at least two years and anyone who willfully destroys a public record that’s supposed to be preserved is guilty of a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. The settlement agreement includes $25,000 in lost wages each to Irwin and Ferreiro, while the remainder of the $2.3 million is for general damages and attorneys’ fees. As part of the settlement, the plaintiffs are required to drop the case, destroy city documents in their possession, and never pursue jobs in the city again. Additionally, both parties are barred from talking publicly about the settlement amount. Irwin told the Times that records disappeared and yet, “There’s been no accountability. These officials basically got away with it and the taxpayers are paying.” Ferreiro said, “It’s still a loss for the citizens of Seattle,” because some questions about the actions of city officials “will never be answered.” In August 2022, then-King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg requested that Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall investigate the city officials’ deleted texts, but Cole-Tindall’s office has yet to announce the results. Durkan’s office previously claimed that an “unknown technology issue” caused the texts to go missing but a city-commissioned forensic report found that Durkan’s phone was changed in July 2020 to delete texts automatically after 30 days as well as texts stored in the cloud. Durkan also previously claimed that she dropped her phone in a tide pool on the July 4 weekend of that year. A subsequent forensic report commissioned by business owners and residents suing the city over the deadly autonomous zone revealed that Durkan texts were manually deleted. In February, the city settled that lawsuit for $3.65 million, including $600,000 in penalties for the deleted texts. The settlement came swiftly after a judge sanctioned the city for destroying evidence and noted that Durkan’s excuses “strained credibility.” Over 27,000 texts were deleted from Best’s phone and the most recent forensic reports show that phones used by Scoggins and others were reset in October 2020. In 2022, Seattle paid nearly $200,000 and pledged to improve its public records processes to settle a lawsuit brought by The Seattle Times that alleged the city had mishandled requests from reporters who asked for the messages between city officials. In February, the owner of a Korean restaurant filed a federal lawsuit against the city for the loss of business and expenses incurred during the notorious autonomous zone. Litigation against the city as a result of the zone has already cost Seattle over $11 million. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/bipartisan-bill-pentagon-mexican-drug-cartels-pushing-fentanyl Bipartisan bill would empower Pentagon to take down Mexican drug cartels pushing fentanyl Democrats and Republicans from the House and Senate will debut legislation that would declare fentanyl a national security threat and allow the Pentagon to take new action targeting Mexican drug cartels. Senate Armed Services Committee members Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner Tuesday morning their forthcoming bipartisan, bicameral bill to use their oversight authority of the Department of Defense to force the federal government to take stronger actions against Mexican transnational criminal organizations. "The amount of lives lost in Iowa and across the country due to this deadly drug has far surpassed the federal government’s response, and we must scale immediately to combat this national security threat," Ernst said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner. "This bipartisan work will engage Mexico as an active partner to counter fentanyl trafficking and put the Pentagon’s tools to use to save American lives.” The Disrupt Fentanyl Trafficking Act would require the Pentagon to develop a fentanyl-specific counterdrug strategy, including how to work directly with the Mexican military and to increase security operations with Mexico. Fentanyl is largely moved into the U.S. from Mexico, and the ingredients to make the powerful drug originate in China and are then shipped to producers in Mexico. Ernst and Kaine maintained that enlisting the Mexican government as an equal partner in the war on fentanyl is critical, given the southern neighbor has failed to get a hold of the problem over the past five years. Between 2017 and 2021, fentanyl seizures at the U.S. border increased by 950% — most of which occurred under Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Fentanyl has become the leading cause of death in U.S. adults between 18 and 45. President Joe Biden, in his State of the Union address earlier this year, vowed to do more to tackle the epidemic. Now before we end today, it’s time for a new segment I like to call the rundown: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/15/microsoft-activision-deal-eu-approves-takeover-of-call-of-duty-maker.html European Union regulators on Monday approved Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion acquisition of gaming firm Activision Blizzard, subject to remedies offered by the U.S. tech giant. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said that Microsoft offered remedies in the nascent area of cloud gaming that have staved off antitrust concerns. These remedies centered on allowing users to stream Activision games they purchase on any cloud streaming platform. Europe’s green light is a huge win for Microsoft, after the U.K.’s top competition authority last month blocked the deal. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/05/15/china-sentences-78-year-old-us-citizen-life-prison-spying-charges.html China sentenced a 78-year-old United States citizen to life in prison Monday on spying charges, in a case that could exacerbate the deterioration in ties between Beijing and Washington over recent years. Details of the charges against John Shing-Wan Leung, who also holds permanent residency in Hong Kong, have not been publicly released. Such investigations and trials are held behind closed doors and little information is generally released other than vague accusations of infiltration, gathering secrets and threatening state security. https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/05/15/81-year-old-martha-stewart-poses-for-sports-illustrated-swimsuit/ Martha Stewart, who is 81-years-old, posed for the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, making her the oldest cover model in SI swimsuit issue history. That’s it… that’s all there is with that story. https://www.foxnews.com/sports/horse-euthanized-churchill-downs-broken-leg-becomes-8th-thoroughbred-die-track-last-2-weeks Another horse is dead after running at Churchill Downs, the site of the annual Kentucky Derby. Rio Moon broke his leg on Sunday near the finish line and had to be euthanized. The horse became the eighth to die in the last two weeks at the racetrack - seven died of multiple causes in the days, and hours, leading up to the May 6 Derby. https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/ja-morant-could-face-significant-suspension-to-start-2023-24-nba-season-over-latest-controversy-per-report/ In NBA news… The Memphis Grizzlies could start next season without their best player for a period of time. After an Instagram Live video circulated online that showed Grizzlies superstar Ja Morant holding what appeared to be a gun in a car, the All-Star guard was suspended by Memphis from all team activities. But that's not the only suspension Morant could be facing. The franchise centerpiece could be facing a "significant suspension" from the league, according to Adrian Wojnarowski. The video in question was from an Instagram Live on Saturday, and it shows Morant in a car with friends and for a brief second as the camera pans to him it appears that he is holding a gun. After the video made the rounds on social media, the Grizzlies suspended their star guard. The league then announced it was launching an investigation into the situation.

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Wednesday, May 17th, 2023. Concordis Education Partners: Classical Christian education has reminded us to aim education at truth, but the trivium has been used as a formula rather than a way of training students in discernment. To teach well, you must coach. Concordis Foundation is offering their third annual BOOT CAMP – a faculty summit – July 11-13th in Moscow, Idaho. This is a three-day intensive teaching training where you learn to coach students, using the trivium, so that you can meet students at all learning levels. Learn more at concordispartners.com https://www.dailywire.com/news/tsa-rolls-out-facial-recognition-technology-test-at-several-major-airports TSA Rolls Out Facial Recognition Technology Test At Several Major Airports The Transportation Security Administration is testing the use of facial recognition technology at airports across the nation, a move that the federal agency claims will help employees more easily identify travelers. Passengers may soon find themselves in a security screening line where they are asked to place their identification into a slot and look into a camera, after which a small screen will take their picture and flash the words “photo complete,” permitting the traveler to continue through the security process without handing their identification to an employee. The technology is currently in use at 16 airports throughout the country, such as those in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City, according to a report from the Associated Press. Passengers are allowed to opt out of the pilot program conducted by the TSA, which is a branch of the Department of Homeland Security. TSA employees in the security lines with the technology, which examines whether the identification is real and whether the identification belongs to the traveler, will nevertheless be present to ensure that the system reaches correct conclusions. The test of the technology comes despite a February letter from five members of the Senate, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who expressed concern over reports that the system could be implemented across the United States as soon as this year if deemed successful. The lawmakers contended that facial recognition technology “represents a risk to civil liberties and privacy rights.” Federal entities already leverage facial recognition technology in various capacities despite the privacy and security concerns: a report published last year by the Government Accountability Office found that 18 out of 24 agencies reported using facial recognition systems in fiscal year 2020, largely for computer access and law enforcement activities, while 14 out of 42 agencies that employ law enforcement officers reported using the technology in criminal investigations. Americans broadly support the “widespread use of facial recognition technology” by police officers who utilize the systems for law enforcement purposes, according to a survey from Pew Research Center, in which 27% of respondents said the policy was a “bad idea” and 46% said the policy was a “good idea.” Other state and local governments have indeed banned biometric recognition technology. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit last year against Google and Meta for breaches of state laws which prohibit technology firms from using data such as iris scans, fingerprints, voiceprints, or records of hand and face geometry for commercial purposes without permission. https://www.theepochtimes.com/anheuser-busch-announces-changes-company-amid-bud-light-boycott_5266255.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=BonginoReport Anheuser-Busch Makes Changes to Company Amid Bud Light Boycott Anheuser-Busch revealed that it is making attempts to change its marketing structure in the midst of a backlash after Bud Light produced a can featuring a transgender activist’s face for a social media promotion. While the firm did not make mention of the controversy and boycott, a spokesperson for the brewing giant told Fox2Now in St. Louis that it held a meeting in the city and that “we have communicated some next steps with our internal teams and wholesaler partners.” “First, we made it clear that the safety and welfare of our employees and our partners is our top priority,” the company spokesperson said before adding that a new executive was tapped to head a marketing division. “Todd Allen was appointed Vice President of Bud Light added the spokesperson. “Third, we made some adjustments to streamline the structure of our marketing function to reduce layers so that our most senior marketers are more closely connected to every aspect of our brands activities. These steps will help us maintain focus on the things we do best: brewing great beer for all consumers, while always making a positive impact in our communities and on our country.” For the past month and a half, Bud Light’s sales have taken a nosedive after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a video with the namesake can on social media, writing “#budlightpartner” in the caption. That led many to believe the light beer was officially partnering with Mulvaney and would launch a campaign with the activist, who is a biological male. Anheuser-Busch executive Brendan Whitworth said in an April 14 news release that the beverage firm had had no intention of sparking division or wading into a political debate. However, Whitworth made no mention of Mulvaney or the backlash. Weeks later, Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Michel Doukeris told investors in a call that there was no partnership with Mulvaney and that only “one can” was produced with Mulvaney’s face. In a subsequent Financial Times interview, Doukeris claimed that the slumping Bud Light sales were sparked by social media-driven “misinformation.” Continuing, the CEO said that people believed it was a campaign. “It was not: it was one post. It was not an advertisement,” he remarked, contradicting the #budlightpartner hashtag that Mulvaney had written. Sales of the product dropped 26 percent year-over-year in the week ending April 22, according to Bump Williams Consulting based on Nielsen IQ data. Meanwhile, sales of rival beers Coors Light and Miller Light both saw their sales rise by about 10 percent each, according to the data. In the midst of the backlash, two Bud Light executives—Alissa Heinerscheid and Daniel Blake—took a leave of absence, the company said. “Given the circumstances, Alissa has decided to take a leave of absence which we support. Daniel has also decided to take a leave of absence,” the company said last month. https://thepostmillennial.com/seattle-to-pay-out-2-3-million-to-whistleblowers-who-revealed-mayor-engaged-in-chaz-cover-up-by-deleting-texts?utm_campaign=64487 Seattle to pay out $2.3 MILLION to whistleblowers who revealed mayor engaged in CHAZ cover-up by deleting texts The city of Seattle will be forced to pay $2.3 million to settle a lawsuit brought by city employees who were mistreated after they helped reveal that thousands of then-Mayor Jenny Durkan’s text messages had been deleted during the violent riots that rocked the city and the deadly Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in the summer of 2020. A whistleblower complaint by the employees helped to reveal that the texts of Durkan, former Police Chief Carmen Best, Fire Chief Harold Scoggins, and other top officials from the summer of 2020 were intentionally deleted. Though the King County Superior Court case was resolved last month, the terms of Seattle’s settlement with Stacy Irwin and Kimberly Ferreiro weren’t finalized until this week and the details were released to The Seattle Times through a public disclosure request on Friday. The $2.3 million payout is in addition to over $770,000, as of April, spent by the city on attorneys to defend the case, the outlet reported. According to the suit, Irwin and Ferreiro claimed that they resigned as public-records officers in Durkan’s office due to hostile conditions and retaliation. The pair claimed they were “subjected to scorn, ridicule, abuse, and hostility … and the demand to perform illegal acts.” The pair sounded the alarm in 2021 when they complained to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission that the mayor’s office was mishandling records requests. An investigation by the SEEC determined that the mayor’s legal counsel, Michelle Chen, had violated the state Public Records Act by using narrow interpretations of certain requests to exclude Durkan’s missing texts and diverged from best practices by not informing requesters the texts were missing. Under state law, texts and other communications about public businesses by local elected officials must be kept for at least two years and anyone who willfully destroys a public record that’s supposed to be preserved is guilty of a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. The settlement agreement includes $25,000 in lost wages each to Irwin and Ferreiro, while the remainder of the $2.3 million is for general damages and attorneys’ fees. As part of the settlement, the plaintiffs are required to drop the case, destroy city documents in their possession, and never pursue jobs in the city again. Additionally, both parties are barred from talking publicly about the settlement amount. Irwin told the Times that records disappeared and yet, “There’s been no accountability. These officials basically got away with it and the taxpayers are paying.” Ferreiro said, “It’s still a loss for the citizens of Seattle,” because some questions about the actions of city officials “will never be answered.” In August 2022, then-King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg requested that Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall investigate the city officials’ deleted texts, but Cole-Tindall’s office has yet to announce the results. Durkan’s office previously claimed that an “unknown technology issue” caused the texts to go missing but a city-commissioned forensic report found that Durkan’s phone was changed in July 2020 to delete texts automatically after 30 days as well as texts stored in the cloud. Durkan also previously claimed that she dropped her phone in a tide pool on the July 4 weekend of that year. A subsequent forensic report commissioned by business owners and residents suing the city over the deadly autonomous zone revealed that Durkan texts were manually deleted. In February, the city settled that lawsuit for $3.65 million, including $600,000 in penalties for the deleted texts. The settlement came swiftly after a judge sanctioned the city for destroying evidence and noted that Durkan’s excuses “strained credibility.” Over 27,000 texts were deleted from Best’s phone and the most recent forensic reports show that phones used by Scoggins and others were reset in October 2020. In 2022, Seattle paid nearly $200,000 and pledged to improve its public records processes to settle a lawsuit brought by The Seattle Times that alleged the city had mishandled requests from reporters who asked for the messages between city officials. In February, the owner of a Korean restaurant filed a federal lawsuit against the city for the loss of business and expenses incurred during the notorious autonomous zone. Litigation against the city as a result of the zone has already cost Seattle over $11 million. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/bipartisan-bill-pentagon-mexican-drug-cartels-pushing-fentanyl Bipartisan bill would empower Pentagon to take down Mexican drug cartels pushing fentanyl Democrats and Republicans from the House and Senate will debut legislation that would declare fentanyl a national security threat and allow the Pentagon to take new action targeting Mexican drug cartels. Senate Armed Services Committee members Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner Tuesday morning their forthcoming bipartisan, bicameral bill to use their oversight authority of the Department of Defense to force the federal government to take stronger actions against Mexican transnational criminal organizations. "The amount of lives lost in Iowa and across the country due to this deadly drug has far surpassed the federal government’s response, and we must scale immediately to combat this national security threat," Ernst said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner. "This bipartisan work will engage Mexico as an active partner to counter fentanyl trafficking and put the Pentagon’s tools to use to save American lives.” The Disrupt Fentanyl Trafficking Act would require the Pentagon to develop a fentanyl-specific counterdrug strategy, including how to work directly with the Mexican military and to increase security operations with Mexico. Fentanyl is largely moved into the U.S. from Mexico, and the ingredients to make the powerful drug originate in China and are then shipped to producers in Mexico. Ernst and Kaine maintained that enlisting the Mexican government as an equal partner in the war on fentanyl is critical, given the southern neighbor has failed to get a hold of the problem over the past five years. Between 2017 and 2021, fentanyl seizures at the U.S. border increased by 950% — most of which occurred under Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Fentanyl has become the leading cause of death in U.S. adults between 18 and 45. President Joe Biden, in his State of the Union address earlier this year, vowed to do more to tackle the epidemic. Now before we end today, it’s time for a new segment I like to call the rundown: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/15/microsoft-activision-deal-eu-approves-takeover-of-call-of-duty-maker.html European Union regulators on Monday approved Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion acquisition of gaming firm Activision Blizzard, subject to remedies offered by the U.S. tech giant. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said that Microsoft offered remedies in the nascent area of cloud gaming that have staved off antitrust concerns. These remedies centered on allowing users to stream Activision games they purchase on any cloud streaming platform. Europe’s green light is a huge win for Microsoft, after the U.K.’s top competition authority last month blocked the deal. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/05/15/china-sentences-78-year-old-us-citizen-life-prison-spying-charges.html China sentenced a 78-year-old United States citizen to life in prison Monday on spying charges, in a case that could exacerbate the deterioration in ties between Beijing and Washington over recent years. Details of the charges against John Shing-Wan Leung, who also holds permanent residency in Hong Kong, have not been publicly released. Such investigations and trials are held behind closed doors and little information is generally released other than vague accusations of infiltration, gathering secrets and threatening state security. https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/05/15/81-year-old-martha-stewart-poses-for-sports-illustrated-swimsuit/ Martha Stewart, who is 81-years-old, posed for the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, making her the oldest cover model in SI swimsuit issue history. That’s it… that’s all there is with that story. https://www.foxnews.com/sports/horse-euthanized-churchill-downs-broken-leg-becomes-8th-thoroughbred-die-track-last-2-weeks Another horse is dead after running at Churchill Downs, the site of the annual Kentucky Derby. Rio Moon broke his leg on Sunday near the finish line and had to be euthanized. The horse became the eighth to die in the last two weeks at the racetrack - seven died of multiple causes in the days, and hours, leading up to the May 6 Derby. https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/ja-morant-could-face-significant-suspension-to-start-2023-24-nba-season-over-latest-controversy-per-report/ In NBA news… The Memphis Grizzlies could start next season without their best player for a period of time. After an Instagram Live video circulated online that showed Grizzlies superstar Ja Morant holding what appeared to be a gun in a car, the All-Star guard was suspended by Memphis from all team activities. But that's not the only suspension Morant could be facing. The franchise centerpiece could be facing a "significant suspension" from the league, according to Adrian Wojnarowski. The video in question was from an Instagram Live on Saturday, and it shows Morant in a car with friends and for a brief second as the camera pans to him it appears that he is holding a gun. After the video made the rounds on social media, the Grizzlies suspended their star guard. The league then announced it was launching an investigation into the situation.

Effective 2023, the California Public Records Act (“CPRA”) has a new statutory “home” within the Government Code.  (See Gov. Code, § 7920.000 et seq.)  While the Legislature has indicated this reorganization is not intended to change the CPRA substantively, the practical effects of this reorganization remain to be seen.  In this Lozano Smith Podcast episode, host Sloan Simmons engages with Lozano Smith Partner, Manuel Martinez, and Senior Counsel, Alyse Pacheco Nichols, to discuss this statutory reorganization; guesses as to the Legislature's rationale for the reorganization; and how this reorganization will or will not effect the way public agencies response to CPRA requests. Show Notes & References 2:10 – Statute reorganization effective January 2023 12:04 – Status of catch-all provisions (Alphabetical List [7930.100 - 7930.215]) 13:57 – Impact on public agencies 18:30 – Trends in case law and in practice 19:15 – Iloh v. Regents of the University of California (2023) 87 Cal.App.5th 513 19:42 – City of San Jose v. Superior Court (2017) 2 Cal.5th 608 (Lozano Smith Tip Jar - 2017)   For more information on the topics discussed in this podcast, please visit our website at: www.lozanosmith.com/podcast.

This week, we're talking to Melanie Majors, the executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government. FOG was created because citizens have a fundamental right to know what their government is doing, and that includes the right to inspect public records and the right to attend public meetings. FOG works to make sure these rights are strong and available to everyone. Sometimes, this means assisting individual citizens who are denied information by local or state government. It also means strengthening and broadening freedom-of-information laws through legislation and litigation. And it means educating the public and public officials about the letter and spirit of sunshine laws. With New Mexico's 60-day legislative session having just wrapped up, several bills of interest were winding their way through the legislature — bills that would have a tremendous impact on transparency and the state's Inspection of Public Records Act. For instance, Senate Bill 63 — sponsored by Sen. Bill Tallman, an Albuquerque Democrat, would shield the names of applicants of high-level government jobs, including city managers, school superintendents and police chiefs. Tallman contended the bill's passage would attract a better pool of candidates. We'll talk to Melanie about FOG's opposition to that bill and what became of it. Another proposed bill, House Bill 232, would revise New Mexico's public records law to exempt from release certain cybersecurity records and law enforcement video of death notifications, nudity or certain other images. It would also require people requesting law enforcement video to include either a police report number, computer dispatch number or a date range. A request using a date range would need to include the officer's name, time or location of what the requester is seeking. While FOG was involved in discussions surrounding the bill, the organization did not formally oppose the changes.

On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Julie Anderson about her campaign for Washington Secretary of State - why she decided to run, how partisanship affects the office, and the experience she brings to manage the Secretary of State's broad portfolio. With regard to managing elections, they discuss her plans to increase voter turnout, her stance and approach to local jurisdictions potentially adopting alternative systems such as ranked choice voting, and how to handle misinformation that creates mistrust in our elections. Crystal then gives Julie an opportunity to respond to the many attacks from her detractors before switching gears to dig into her thoughts on managing the state archives - both preserving historical records and ensuring that the Public Records Act is administered efficiently and effectively. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.  Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Julie Anderson at @nonpartisansos.   Resources Campaign Website - Julie Anderson   Transcript   [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Well, I am very excited to be welcoming to the show - Julie Anderson, who is a candidate for Secretary of State, which is one of the most important and consequential offices in the state and going to be up for election on your November ballot. Welcome, Julie. [00:00:55] Julie Anderson: Thank you, Crystal - and thanks for acknowledging that the Secretary of State's office is really important. It's nice to meet somebody who's excited about picking leadership for the important office. That's - thank you. [00:01:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So what made you decide to run for Secretary of State? [00:01:12] Julie Anderson: Well, I certainly wasn't expecting to do this in 2022 - but definitely the importance of the office. I'm one of the end users of the office - the Secretary of State is my authorizing agency and leader for elections on the county level and also for document recording - so it's an important office to me and I know it's important to the other 38 counties as well. So when Kim picked up and left, I jumped right in. And I was also inspired to do it because I wanted, I saw this as an opportunity to make a shift in the office and run as a Nonpartisan and to hopefully create a little bit of an air bubble in the office and normalize the idea of hiring professional election administrators who aren't associated with the political party. So that's why I'm running. [00:02:10] Crystal Fincher: And that has been a difference this cycle that we've seen - just that people are not familiar with. This office has been held by a Republican for several years, the only statewide office that was previously held by a Republican. With the appointment of former Senator Hobbs to now being Secretary Hobbs, which - a lot of people were advocating for your appointment in that seat, citing your experience for that - but he is there and a Democrat. But you have decided to run as an Independent. Why do you think being Independent is so important to the office? And do you think that we've suffered from having it be a partisan office in the past? [00:02:53] Julie Anderson: One quick thing - I'm making a real point of calling myself Nonpartisan rather than Independent - because as you've noticed in Chris Vance's race, he calls himself an Independent and he has designs on creating an independent third party. I have no designs on creating a group or a party and - I don't have a group - so I am literally nonpartisan. Have we suffered by having partisans in that office before? I think that we've been really lucky with Sam Reed and Kim Wyman taking the job very seriously and performing the job in a nonpartisan fashion. I do think, however, that their party affiliation dragged some unnecessary drama into the office and made their work more difficult. It is a political office and so the opposing team is always looking for a way to knock you off at the end of your term, and is always positioning to put their best candidate forward doing that. So there's always a little jockeying around depriving the incumbent of oxygen and victories so that they're less credible whenever they run for re-election. And then in the electorate, there is also skepticism because we live in an increasingly hyper-polarized political environment, people are just naturally suspicious of somebody that holds a political party that they don't belong to. So those are two reasons why I think that partisanship in this job does not help or add value to the work. And I don't think that having a party affiliation does add value to the policy work or the operations of the office. [00:04:38] Crystal Fincher: Now you have talked a lot about the experience that you bring to this office should you be elected. Can you talk about what your experience has been as Pierce County Auditor and how you feel it's going to be beneficial as Secretary of State? [00:04:51] Julie Anderson: Sure. So for over 12 years - 13 in November - I've been the nonpartisan county auditor for Pierce County, which is our state's second largest county. Which means I've conducted hundreds of elections in Washington State and have also presided over a recording document program - making recording documents, preserving them, and making them accessible to the public - and then also business registry and licensing. So with that experience, I'm familiar from the bottom up with Washington State's votewa.gov election management system because my team was part of, really, building it along with other lead counties and obviously the Secretary of State's office. I sat on the Executive Steering Committee while that was under development and when it launched and went live in 2019. So having that background, I think helps, puts me in a position to better help the county auditors and the election administrators using that system. It also helps me to design and implement policy proposals for the Legislature to consider since I know how the system works. And it also puts me in a position for visioning how to modernize the office, what the needs are to go the next step, and where the gaps are. And when we're talking about elections - where the gaps are specifically - we don't have a lot of residual gains left to make in Washington State, but the ones that we do need to make are going to be the most difficult and challenging. And I think that's where experience matters. [00:06:33] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely matters - and it matters for more than just the elections too. The elections are certainly the most visible part of what the Secretary of State does, but it has such a broad portfolio of responsibilities. And just recapping those briefly for people who may be unfamiliar. In addition to supervising local elections, filing and verifying initiatives and referenda, and distributing the Voters' Pamphlets - also responsible for registering private corporations, limited partnerships and trademarks; registering individuals and organizations, and commercial fundraisers involved in charitable solicitations; administering the state's Address Confidentiality program, which is critically important for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking - so very important too, public safety really - collecting and preserving the historical records of the state and making those records available for research; coordinating implementation of the state's records management laws, which are constantly in the news for one reason or another; affixing the state's seal; regulating use of the seal; filing and attesting to official acts of the governor; certifying what the Legislature does; and sometimes even called upon to represent the state in international trade and cultural missions and greeting dignitaries. There's so much under that umbrella, each of which seems like it could potentially be its own office really, but so broad. How has your experience as an auditor helped to prepare you for the full portfolio of what you're going to be managing if you're elected to be Secretary of State? [00:08:07] Julie Anderson: I would say it's auditor plus my whole professional portfolio. So I come with public and nonprofit leadership experience in human services, criminal justice, and economic development. I was notably the Executive Director of the YWCA in Tacoma-Pierce County, so that speaks to the sensitivity and understanding of the Address Confidentiality Program, and I can tell you how I would apply that to expand that program. And then in economic development, I was a Senior Policy Advisor for the State Department of Commerce, where my portfolio included workforce development and developing a green economy and also innovation zones. But that body of work in the public and nonprofit sector means that I'm really tuned into the importance of community, and the unique conditions in community, and understanding that I have to have a partnership in community to do any of those things well. A top-down management model or staying isolated in that executive position is not going to make the organization better or better connected with the citizens and residents of Washington. And we don't just serve citizens, we serve the residents of Washington State. So I think that my community connections and my work on the 2020 census, for example, I have some great ideas about how to engage community in each of those programs, whether it's talking about voter turnout, access for people living with disabilities, or how we are talking about curating the heritage and history of Washington State to make sure that we don't disappear people and cultures and make sure that we're doing culturally relevant screening of our collection and portfolio and working in partnership with community to do that. [00:10:04] Crystal Fincher: So now you mentioned voter engagement and turnout - you've talked on a few occasions about efforts to increase voter registration, and increasing voter registration is not necessarily consistent with increasing voter turnout. What do you propose to do to increase voter turnout, to increase the amount of people who are participating in our government and democracy, making their voices heard? And how are you going to go about that? [00:10:32] Julie Anderson: Well, it's my belief that election administrators are facilitators, not catalysts. And looping back to community, I'm going to leverage community a lot. For example, I think you have to pay attention, first of all, to data and trends. We know that the four-year election cycle has really unique peaks and valleys that are pretty darn predictable. In a presidential election cycle, we probably don't need a lot of help with getting the word out. But in these off-year elections and in local elections, we need a tremendous amount of help because that's when voter turnout is the lowest. One of the things that I would propose doing is partnering with local government and with schools to focus on municipal elections and pooling resources and having - the Secretary of State can certainly provide materials and infrastructure, but the execution of how that gets delivered in a community is going to be unique in every community. But I can see municipalities all focusing their energy on a one-week period where we're getting voters prepared to vote, getting them to develop a plan, and helping them if they need reminding about what their local government does for them and with them. And then partnering with schools in that same one-week period where you're doing some education in schools about local government and then challenging kids to go home and talk to their parents about the election, so they can have a dinner table, a kitchen table conversation about it. So there's concentrated energy in just one week, it's hyper-localized - because strategies that are going to work in Asotin County is going to be completely different than King County - and locals know best. So I see myself as being a facilitator and having local communities tell the Secretary of State how I can help. But at least laying out a plan and applying some leadership to get everybody pulling in one direction, concentrating on one week, I think would be helpful. You have probably visited my website and you also know that I plan a VOICE Program, which is Voter Outreach and Innovative Civic Engagement, where I'd be replicating some really successful strategies from the 2020 Census, pooling philanthropic dollars with government dollars, and then having a very low-barrier granting program where communities can propose their own voter outreach and engagement programs. And again, I can't wait to see how creative people are, and it's going to get very - we're going to get some very niche products, but yeah. So those are a couple of ideas, but I would say that the first thing is really paying attention to the data, not just the trends that I talked about - which elections have low turnout and don't - but also geography. One of the great things about the Washington State Voting Rights Act that has been proposed - we already have a Voting Rights Act, but what I think of as Phase 2 that's been proposed - is it came with money and authority for the University of Washington to hold data and they're going to be getting electoral inputs, like candidate filing, rates of voter registration, rates of ballot return, and combining that with demographic data. And doing basically heat mapping and analysis so that we can also look at geographic areas and populations that have low voter turnout or low levels of engagement. So let's pay attention to the trends, let's pay attention to what that Washington State Voting Rights Act data tells us, and start developing strategies in response to that. [00:14:28] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense, and the ideas that you have - especially that one week, I'd love to see that implemented - that would be exciting. There are also efforts to increase turnout through some structural changes to the ways that we vote, and there are changes that are on the ballot in several jurisdictions right now in our state, including ranked choice voting, approval voting, a number of different things. Are you in favor of ranked choice voting, approval voting, some of these changes? Do you support those? [00:14:55] Julie Anderson: I support the local option bill for ranked choice voting that has been kicking around in the Legislature for about six years now, and I look forward to supporting local jurisdictions that want to adopt ranked choice voting. I think it is head and shoulders the leader in electoral reform proposals, and it seems to be particularly popular among young voters - and Gen Xers and Millennials are going to be the biggest share of the voting population by 2028 - if we're talking about increasing voter turnout, we've also got to look at youth and really change the way we talk with youth - not talk at them, and not using government channels. I look forward to harnessing some of that young adult leadership and having them tell us the best ways to engage with young voters, and one of the things that they're saying is ranked choice voting. There's a lot of disenchantment with our primary system, and I think that they're really looking for alternatives and wanting untraditional candidates and maybe minority party candidates to have a fighting chance in the primary. So I think they're excited about that, and if your community decides to take it on, I'm ready to support. There's a load of work to be done to make ranked choice voting successful, and there's a lot of rulemaking that falls on the Secretary of State, so one of the first things I'm going to do is gather together a cohort of communities that are seriously talking about this and start working on the rulemaking so that we have a chance of having some standardization as this rolls out. [00:16:32] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and one component of that that I think is particularly important - I'm wondering what your perspective is on it - is the voter education component. Whenever there is a change - we struggle with our existing system to make sure everyone understands how to make sure that everyone understands how to vote, and even something like - hey, remember to sign the ballot - still slips through the cracks for a lot of people. Several things can seem very intuitive, but maybe not actually be for everyone for a lot of different reasons. When we're making a major change, the importance of education is that much greater. How do you propose, when there are changes, to make sure that we do have an adequate amount of voter education in all of our communities across the state so that people aren't intimidated or disenfranchised by the change? [00:17:23] Julie Anderson: First, taking a clue with other states that have been doing this a while - I've been through several webinars and in-person visits with jurisdictions that do it. But instead of just copying what somebody else does, I want to do usability testing. Assume nothing. Let's get that cohort together, let's get stakeholders and end users together. Do mock ballots, do mock voter instructions. And actually test it through scientific usability testing and find out where the errors are going to be made and what we can do to change it. And that includes - ranked choice voting ballots that may need to be translated for people that don't speak English well, or different types of ranked choice voting - that's the other thing that's not well understood is - the local option doesn't force you to combine a primary and a general election and just have one election. It's an option. It also leaves open the opportunity for applying a ranked choice voting ballot and using proportional representation elections. There's all sorts of different ways that a ranked choice voting ballot can be applied depending on what the jurisdiction is trying to achieve. We need to do usability testing in all of those forms. [00:18:44] Crystal Fincher: Looking at that and the coordination that's necessary for that, your opponent has talked about - hey, there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation out in the current environment. Now's not the time to make changes, we're experiencing enough of a crisis with trust from some people in our current systems - it's going to require a lot of education, may disenfranchise people. Do you think that's reason enough to not move forward with things that could potentially increase turnout or help better represent communities? [00:19:17] Julie Anderson: Name a reform that didn't have opposition. Name a reform that didn't have barriers and reasons not to do it. Reform is hard in the beginning, and I think we need to have more confidence than that. We need to approach it carefully. We need to do that usability testing. We need to do lots of voter education. Tactically, one of the things that I would like to do - you've noticed on my website, one of the things I propose with transparency is - I want to find a secure way to have voted ballots and cast vote records visible to the public. Other states do it. There is a way to do it. We may need legislation - because paramount is preserving voter privacy, right? That goes without saying. We absolutely can't do it if we can't guarantee voter privacy. But if there is a way that we can, and I believe that there is, and if we can get rules made by the Secretary or legislative fixes, then making those available is really going to help demystify people who don't trust a ranked choice voting ballot and the algorithm that gets used to reallocate votes. If we can make cast vote records public, there is open source software available where they can run the records themselves and retest the vote allocation if they want to. So, I want to look at things like that not only because there is a lot of public interest in auditing elections, but because it also is an enabling feature to making ranked choice voting more understandable and independently auditable. And there is some really neat communication tools that other jurisdictions have used in terms of color coding the reallocation of votes between each round, and they've gotten good results. [00:21:13] Crystal Fincher: And the issue of trust overall is one that you will have to contend with. [00:21:17] Julie Anderson: Always. [00:21:17] Crystal Fincher: We are dealing with an environment where there is certainly disinformation and people who are just spreading information that is false, whether it's denial of the 2020 election federally, or in our state and local elections, who question the security of vote by mail, of ballot dropboxes, of a variety of things that we have implemented successfully. And what they cite about them is false. That's a bad faith effort. But because of that bad faith effort, there are a lot of people who genuinely believe that there are problems - from all sorts of backgrounds, for all sorts of reasons. So how, in this environment where there is disinformation, do you help increase trust in our voting systems and our electoral system with people who frankly just don't have faith in it currently? [00:22:13] Julie Anderson: First of all, not acting defensively, and not acting aggressively, and having a nonpartisan message. The best thing that we can do to maintain and increase confidence is to keep doing what we're doing, which is running error-free elections that are auditable and serve the people. We can do some minor things that I've suggested on my website for transparency. We can do additional risk-limiting audits. Doing a statewide risk-limiting audit, I think, is a good idea. We currently have audits in counties that are called by the political parties, but they're not statistically valid batches of ballots that are being hand counted, and every county is counting a different race. To the Loren Culps of the world, who are just mystified by how the top-of-the-ticket candidate could lose, while the down-ballot candidates prevail, a statewide risk-limiting audit would be really helpful. And by the way, I would be proposing this as a best practice, even if we weren't currently getting pushback from candidates and parties. But to loop back to your question about confidence. Crystal, this is where I think that the nonpartisanship really helps. There's a good study out there that shows that you can, by double digits, move - and this is a phrase I do not like to use, but for shorthand's sake, let's say an election denier, somebody that really believes that the 2020 election was stolen. Even among that group, you can move them by double digits into the confidence tally by simply talking about the due process and the ability to challenge an election. Instead of acting aggressively and defensively about the accusation that it's stolen, just calmly educate them and inform them how elections can be challenged, the due process, how they can challenge individual voter registrations, and repeat how interested we are in any evidence that they have, and that we don't even need them to go to court for them to present us with evidence. I'm still waiting in Pierce County to get some of that canvassing work that the communities say - the door-to-door stuff that they're doing. They're not doing it in Pierce County, but I'm waiting for that because we can sit down and walk through the data with them. And almost always, it's a misconception of - either they're missing pieces that they don't know, or they're misinterpreting the data - and we can walk through it. And occasionally, I would expect to find a correct case. Occasionally, I would expect them to find, among 4.7 million voters and voter registrations, an error in a voter registration record - and we want to know about it and need help fixing it. [00:25:30] Crystal Fincher: Now, you talk about it - that seems reasonable, that is encouraging data and research, and there's certainly a lot that we can talk to people about with that. And it does seem like not being a partisan may be helpful in explaining that - the trust and faith that people have there. But you've been under attack from the Chair of the Democratic Party over this past week. It looks like saying that - oh, no, no, no, Julie Anderson is a partisan, she is a Republican, has a - I will read it and allow you to respond. I see - testified against bills expanding voter accessibility, against election officials promoting voter outreach and education, office sent flawed ballots, takes no position on campaign finance laws, accountable to no one, have talked about having a consultant and campaign staff or consultants who are Republicans and have supported Republicans. Now, I will say - there are quite a few Democrats that I saw question this and say - especially from Pierce County - saying, well, we've regularly seen Julie Anderson in Democratic events also. But some people countered with - well, now we're looking at her with JT Wilcox. I guess starting with the partisanship, and now you're actually associated with Republicans - and I think Rob McKenna has notably talked about endorsing and supporting you - you have been at those events. Can people credibly see you as a Nonpartisan when they see these associations and these endorsements? [00:27:16] Julie Anderson: Sure. I'm a Nonpartisan because I don't belong to any political party, which is different than not talking to anybody. I am not soliciting or accepting any endorsements from any political party, and I'm also not soliciting or accepting any money. But I regularly ask to be introduced. I try to break into legislative meetings and PCO meetings of both parties. Sometimes they'll let me in to introduce myself, sometimes they won't. I asked JT Wilcox if I could crash his salmon bake because I wanted to meet Republicans, and he said yes. And I'm sure that he got a rash of - from his supporters - for having me there. But just not belonging to a party doesn't mean that I don't talk with people, and I think that's important for the Secretary of State to do. One of the critiques is that I'm accountable to no one - I'm accountable to voters, and I've been re-elected overwhelmingly three times as an election administrator in Pierce County, so I have earned the trust and the votes of the residents of Pierce County who have seen me in action. I think it says something that the political parties don't run opponents against me. Presumably if I'm bad and bad for their party's interests, they're going to run somebody against me. The people who are working on my campaign - it was very difficult to find any consultancy that would take me on as a client because there were both credible Republicans and credible Democrats running in the race, and here comes this Nonpartisan lady wanting a contract with them. That's a business model and a relationship they didn't want to ruin, and so it was very hard to find somebody. I ended up getting a referral from Mary Robnett, who's the Pierce County Prosecutor who ran as a Nonpartisan, and I said, who were your consultants? And she introduced me to Josh Amato, and he has been associated as a Republican, I don't even know if he's still a Republican - I'm imagining that he is - and he has worked on Republican campaigns and Nonpartisan campaigns. This is an income-constrained campaign. I do not have a lot of money. I have been having to run this campaign the way I'll run the Secretary of State's office, which is modestly and judiciously. So I had to wait until the general election to hire a staff person, and when I did, I chose a young gentleman who came from the Derek Kilmer campaign, and had worked on Emily Randall's campaign, and worked with the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. It is true that I contracted with an independent vendor for PR in the primary, and she had Republican roots. But my detractors are cherry-picking - they also failed to notice that I hired a fundraiser who is very progressive and comes from the non-profit community, so I think I'm pretty balanced in who vendors, what kind of vendors are helping me. But most importantly, the vendors don't boss the candidate around. I'm the one that's responsible for every single policy position that you hear me talk about. Do you think the Republican consultant was happy about me saying I support ranked choice voting in the Washington State Voting Rights Act? No, he thought that that was a crazy thing to do - but I'm the boss, not him. I've lost track of the attacks. What other attacks do we want to look at? [00:31:07] Crystal Fincher: Well, I think one worth addressing is testifying against bills expanding voter accessibility - and I think that one, maybe for voters, is probably a concern. If looking at Republicans - hearing the attacks on seemingly democracy, partisanship - hey, we want to stop same-day registration, we don't like vote by mail, we need to reduce the amount of drop boxes, and the types of reforms that we have embraced here in Washington State - and is that going to impact where you stand on those issues and how much of a leader you are there? [00:31:47] Julie Anderson: So, in testifying, I had a leadership role in the statewide Association of County Auditors. So, I was either the Legislative Co-chair on the Legislative Committee or the President. And 39 counties come to a consensus on what their position on bills is - and because of proximity or leadership position, I was often asked to represent the association on those bills. Crystal, name for me a legislative proposal that is perfect on the first day that it's introduced. [00:32:18] Crystal Fincher: Well, I can't do that. I can't do that. [00:32:20] Julie Anderson: Not many. Many of them need to, in the legislative process - through testimony, stakeholder engagement, and the amendment process - needs to be changed. And often county auditors, who are the ones that have to operationalize good ideas and bad ideas, have feedback and have concerns. Most of that testimony was done at a time when the state wasn't paying for state elections, and it was all falling back on county general funds. It wasn't until 2020 that the state passed a bill to start funding their share of state elections, and it didn't take effect until 2021, which does us no good - it's really going to make an impact this year. So, a lot of the testimony was driven by our concerns about resources, time, money, and staffing to get done some complicated things. In other cases, it was technology. So, same-day registration only became viable when we had VoteWA up and running so that we had real-time visibility on registration and balloting transactions around the state. And I will say - again, cherry-picking, my detractors are - in as early as 2015, I was personally advocating for the Washington State Voting Rights Act well before it got passed, even though the association either had a neutral stance or they had constructive feedback and testimony. So, I am a strong supporter of vote-by-mail, strong supporter of same-day registration, strong supporter of just about every electoral reform that's taken place since 2016. And the expansion of ballot dropboxes - I know that one piece of feedback that's been fluttering around is my opposition to dropboxes on college campuses - again, in my role as, in the Association of County Auditors. And - like in Pierce County, at that time, I was really struggling for expanding dropboxes, period, in my community. And I knew, using that geographical and demographic data and that voter turnout data that I used to make decisions, I knew that there were pockets in my community that really could have benefited from a ballot dropbox - as opposed to the University of Washington of Tacoma, which is a commuter school, not a residential school with young people far-flung from all over the United States that might be confused about how to get a ballot or how to register. It's a commuter school. And having a ballot dropbox on that campus, where people are driving to and from their homes to classes, and not being able to install a box at the Housing Authority or at Manitou, which - anyway, you don't know my neighborhoods. [00:35:35] Crystal Fincher: I know a little bit. [00:35:37] Julie Anderson: Okay. All right, all right. So that didn't make a lot of sense to me, and I stand by that. I really think that the control of where ballot dropboxes go should be local, using local intelligence and local needs. I completely support the threshold, like population standards. And by the way, all of this wraps around to why I support the Washington State Voting Rights Act, and the expanded version that's going to come up in session again this year. Right now, we have a Voting Rights Act that is really specifically tailored or focused on vote dilution and that helped us get through redistricting safely. But we are now talking about vote denial and vote abridgment. And I support it strongly for this very reason. If you're going to give local election administrators control over where to place ballot dropboxes, we need to make sure it's not at the detriment of protected populations and that it's doing the most good. And I like that kind of structure. [00:36:47] Crystal Fincher: And I hear you there. I guess the questions that pop up for me personally when I hear that are - one, for me, ideally, shouldn't we be able to find a way to place them in more places, period? And should being a commuter location or a commuter school, given that we aren't limited to returning ballots in a jurisdiction where we're registered, where we vote - a lot of people do commute there, which means a lot of people are there. It's a convenient place to be able to vote. It's an enfranchising thing, even though it may not be for the particular precinct that that ballot dropbox is located in, or neighborhood. Do you factor those things in to making your decisions there? [00:37:34] Julie Anderson: Oh, yeah - I'm making a rookie mistake getting into an argument with the host. So it made perfect sense when I was able to place it at the transit station on the street of Pacific Avenue, just outside of UWT, as opposed to inside a pedestrian plaza not accessible by an automobile and not visible to the general public. And also, by the way, very hard to geolocate on Google Maps for people that are searching for a place to drop their ballot. I do think that the number of ballot dropboxes is increasing - the number is worth looking at, especially because we don't know what's going to happen with the United States Postal Service. By the way, I would work hard as Secretary of State to work with letter carriers to preserve door-to-door delivery. But if that doesn't happen and Congress continues to privatize that service, we need to be prepared and with more dropboxes. And you know something - the Voting Rights Act and UW's data collection that they're going to be doing is going to be very informative about whether we have enough ballot dropboxes and if we have them in the right place. So I'm completely open to it - I just don't like the Legislature deciding where they go. I want to be holistic, data-driven with local intelligence. [00:39:05] Crystal Fincher: That absolutely makes sense. The other one I just want to get to - just talking about accuracy - we've actually seen errors in a number of jurisdictions in a number of ways - from misprinted Voters' Pamphlets, ballots that have to be reprinted. There was talk you provided voters false information and lost 100 cast ballots. What happened there? [00:39:30] Julie Anderson: Okay, two separate incidents, and you're right - errors happen all over the state and all over the country - reminding us all that elections is a human process. We leverage technology a lot, but it requires expertise and a lot of proofreading and sometimes things slip through the crack. In one case, the vendor that Pierce County - well actually, the vendor that is used by over 60% of the electorate in Washington State, K&H - made an error when we mailed out ballots to our military voters and 88 voters out of 550,000 were impacted. What happened was they shuffled the return envelope with the mailer so that 88 people got a ballot packet on time, but the return ballot had somebody else's name on it. When we found out about that, we immediately contacted the voters, reissued the ballots, and immediately sent out a press release. That's what you can count on from me - is tattling on myself, telling people, taking corrective action, and doing whatever we can to make sure it doesn't happen again. In that case, I amended the contract with the provider that said next time you have a machine stoppage and you've got a set of quality control procedures that you use - this is like using your Xerox in your office or your home where you have a paper jam, and then by the time you finish ripping everything out, you've got to figure - do I reprint the whole document or do I figure out what page I left out on? The quality control at that plant is to reprint the whole darn thing, and somebody on the line decided that would be wasteful and they didn't do it. And so I amended the contract to say there's going to be consequences if you deviate from your own quality control. In the infamous case in 2016 where Pierce County urged voters to, if they were going to use the United States Postal Service, to do so - let's see, I think it was 5 days before the election - but if they were going to use a drop and to please use a dropbox otherwise. The allegation says that we were sued - we were not sued. There was a threat of a lawsuit and at the end of the day - what the Democratic Party wanted was for me to mail out a postcard to voters saying that's advice not a requirement, and they wanted me to make that clear on our website. And so that's what we did. And at the end of the day, the attorneys agreed we did nothing illegal. And we haven't done it again since because it created such a stir and so much upset. So we don't even give people advice anymore about - if they're using the Postal Service to do it early, but you should. [00:42:45] Crystal Fincher: Well and yeah - that's the complicated thing. And as someone who is interested in making sure people not only vote, but that their votes get counted and they arrive on time, we are experiencing more challenges with the United States Post Office. There is some uncertainty and certainly at the time, during the 2016 election, there's lots of conversation about potentially challenges with mailing things. So I do generally advise people to mail as early as you can if you're going to do that, but yeah - so I am glad we have gotten some clarity on a number of these issues, but also want to ask about some other things. I guess one of them is talking about preserving the historical records of the State and making them readily available to the public. What are your plans there and how can you make those more accessible and available to researchers, to the public, to everyone? [00:43:41] Julie Anderson: A couple of things. One, the Secretary of State's office, I think, is behind in terms of digitizing paper records and getting them indexed and available. I do believe that my opponent has invested in additional scanning equipment, so that's a good thing. I don't know if they have sufficient FTEs to do that - I'll have to look at that when I get there. But my big concern is looking towards the future government - so our state archives hold all of the records that are produced by local and state government that have permanent retention value all the way from territorial days to right this minute. And in the last 10 years, government has been producing a heck of a lot of digital native, digital born documents that never were a piece of paper. And in my experience, our state archives still has a paper mindset because they're used to working with precious ephemera and paper documents. But we've been producing tons of native, digital born documents that are complex and interactive. Is the Secretary of State's office ready to ingest a high volume of digital records that are interactive and richly indexed, and turn them around and make them accessible to the public? I don't think so, and that's a project that I want to tackle right away. If you think about everything that just happened with redistricting - with all of those maps that were generated, so many different versions - and if you tracked it, you know that that was highly interactive data, right? You could move lines around. That is a record. Is it being preserved in that state, that interactive state, or are the maps being preserved? So those are the questions I'm interested in and want us to be forward thinking about. I am a certified public records officer, so I am very passionate about public access to public information and one of the things that the Secretary of State's office needs to do - there's two things - is provide more training to local records officers and maybe even a camp for requesters. I think that would be a good idea. [00:46:05] Crystal Fincher: No, I think that's excellent and was leading into - the next thing I wanted to talk about was document retention and how closely linked it is with records requests. And we're seeing challenges in that area in jurisdictions across the state - one, in properly retaining the correct records. But the purpose of that retention is so that they can be accessed and provided to people who are entitled to see them, including the public. And we are seeing and hearing reports from a number of reporters and people making requests in jurisdictions across the state who are receiving increased wait times, increased estimates of wait times - sometimes comically long, decades long wait times - for some of those requests potentially. Hearing that localities are short staffed - it's challenging to respond to these kinds of things. And even getting into accusations of bad faith use of the public disclosure request system and records request system - some people trying to do that. Or on the flip side, people just being unhappy about receiving a request and having something looked into and calling things a bad faith attack and looking to delay the process, maybe unnecessarily, in those. How can you help make that process more consistent, help localities handle those in a more consistent way so that people can request and receive public documents when they're entitled to them? [00:47:46] Julie Anderson: Two things - I'm going to be the Secretary of State that's known as a "Clean your closet, kid" Secretary of State. Government is producing more records than ever and they don't know what to do with them. If you don't know how to store them, then you can't find them. So record retention is about record management. The Secretary of State's office used to have a pretty good training program for records officers about that. That needs to be rebooted and redoubled and it needs to have a modernized context. I cannot tell you how many emails are generated hourly by government. We don't know which of those are important or not until you have a sorting and classification system that you maintain constantly that marries emails with the associated documents, right? So that's something that we did in Pierce County. I want to take that passion with me to the Secretary of State's office and hire somebody that's an expert at this to help train local government. And I'll also be an advocate for resources for local government. There are some jurisdictions that are literally drowning and they're also having turnover issues. So I do want them to have resources, but first of all they got to know how to clean their room. [00:49:10] Crystal Fincher: So as we close and as people are trying to figure out how to make this decision - they hear from you, they hear from your opponent, lots of outside groups, and a lot of noise. When you are talking to someone who is considering making this choice between you and your opponent, does not know which direction they're going to go, what do you tell them to help make that decision? [00:49:32] Julie Anderson: That like them, I love Washington State's election laws - want to preserve them, make them even better. And for the first time in history, they have a choice of hiring somebody that's a professional administrator with expertise in these subjects without party strings attached. [00:49:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today, join us today, and letting the voters just get more familiar with you. Much appreciated. [00:50:01] Julie Anderson: Thank you. Thank you for the questions. And I love that you're a fan of the Public Records Act. [00:50:06] Crystal Fincher: I'm such a fan of it - and if it's follow up and organizations being accountable to adhering to it. But yes, thank you so much. [00:50:16] Julie Anderson: You're welcome - bye bye. [00:50:18] Crystal Fincher: Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

September 2, 2022--Alicia Bales hosts a local media round table with Santa Rosa Press Democrat's breaking news reporter Colin Atagi and Kate Fishman, Climate and Environment reporter for the Mendocino Voice. Later, she talk with Legal Director for the First Amendment Coalition David Loy and Kate Maxwell of the Mendocino Voice about Mendocino County's efforts to recoup administrative fees by charging high rates to process Public Records Act requests.

How do you connect with people and introduce guns to newbies? Learn what Open Source Defense is doing and how they're helping to fight for the Second Amendment. TIME CODES: - The best pistol for your wife's cousin - Open Source Defense: Inclusive & Friendly 2A Activism- Safe, Fun Friendly: Shooting Socials- DOJ Responds (POORLY) to Public Records Request on CCW Data leak- Hangin with Mrs. Curtin- Gun Owners Book Club- What's the oldest gun manufacturing company in the United States? Have you ever wondered what's the best pistol for your wife's cousin? Dave Stall asked, and Alisha Curtin answered. Make sure you always get the updates from Gun Owners Radio: https://gunownersradio.com/subscribe The gun debate: a contest to see which side can demonize more people. And culture wars are no different. Each side fires their volleys back and forth, but the only thing that improves are cable news ratings. Open Source Defense is creating something better. Learn about OSD with Kareem Shaya. Hardcore for gun rights, but always inclusive and friendly. Connect with Open Source Defense on their substack: https://opensourcedefense.substack.com/ Have you ever wanted to try shooting a gun but have been nervous about going by yourself? Stop wondering what it's like and join a Shooting Social! Shooting Socials are a great first-time shooter experience where you can learn how to shoot in a safe and friendly environment! If you're a gun owner already and want to help get the truth out about guns, volunteering is also a great opportunity to spread the 2A word. Shooting Socials is a fun program for both newbies and experienced gun owners. There are programs in San Diego, Orange County, and Inland Empire. Join in the fun! https://sandiegocountygunowners.com/shootingsocials/ https://www.orangecountygunowners.com/shootingsocials/ https://www.inlandempiregunowners.com/shooting-socials/ After the California Department of Justice doxxed all the CCW holders in the state, San Diego County Gun Owners filed a PUBLIC RECORDS ACT request for the communications around the data breach. Maybe you'll be surprised by the answer, but probably not. Help defend & restore the Second Amendment in California! https://gunownersradio.com/join Get to know Gun Owners Radio's new guest host, Alisha Curtin! Learn about Alisha's journey from teacher to firearms instructor. Subscribe to Gun Owners Radio on YouTube: https://youtube.com/gunownersradio What books should gun owners read? The most important weapon in your self defense toolbelt is your mindset. Find out Alisha's recommendations. https://www.amazon.com/Spotting-Danger-Before-Spots-You-ebook/dp/B084H3K17Z https://www.amazon.com/Spotting-Danger-Before-Spots-TEENS-ebook/dp/B09B1B22KC STUMP MY NEPHEW What's the oldest gun manufacturing company in the United States? Think you can stump Sam? Send in a question! https://www.gunownersradio.com/stump-my-nephew/ -- Like, subscribe, and share to help restore the Second Amendment in California! Make sure Big Tech can't censor your access to our content and subscribe to our email list: https://gunownersradio.com/subscribe #2a #guns #gunowners #2ndAmendment #2ACA #ca42a #gunownersradio #gunrights #gunownersrights #rkba #shallnotbeinfringed #pewpew -- The right to self-defense is a basic human right. Gun ownership is an integral part of that right. If you want to keep your Second Amendment rights, defend them by joining San Diego County Gun Owners (SDCGO), Orange County Gun Owners (OCGO), or Inland Empire Gun Owners (IEGO). Support the cause by listening to Gun Owners Radio live on Sunday afternoon or on any podcast app at your leisure. Together we will win. https://www.sandiegocountygunowners.com https://orangecountygunowners.com http://inlandempiregunowners.com https://www.firearmspolicy.org https://www.gunownersca.com https://gunowners.org Show your support for Gun Owners Radio sponsors! Get expert legal advice on any firearm-related issues: https://dillonlawgp.com Need a mortgage or VA loan? Call Chris Wiley! https://www.primeres.com/alpine Smarter web development and digital marketing help: https://www.sagetree.com Visit Leo Hamel Fine Jewelers, your one-stop-shop for all your Jewelry needs: https://leohamel.com Learn to FLY at SDFTI! San Diego Flight Training International: https://sdfti.com Get the training and education to keep your family safe with USCCA https://uscca.com/gor

August 22, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors last week discussed a media exemption to a new ordinance that charges hefty fees for public records. On June 21, the Board passed the ordinance, after hearing from County Counsel Christian Curtis that some people requesting public records were doing so in order to conduct market research or to take up county government time. He said then that the county receives about 4.7 public records requests per day, and that fulfilling them takes about 20-30% of his attorneys' time. He told the Board then that one person who is upset about a code enforcement issue is responsible for about 5% of the requests. Members of the local media objected in person and by voicemail at the time, including Kate Maxwell, the publisher of the Mendocino Voice, Zack Cinek, who has an email newsletter on Substack called Newsboy, and me (Sarah Reith). It is unclear if anyone shared their opinion with the Board in writing, because February 8 is the last time that letters criticizing a proposed policy were attached to the agenda so the public could see them. The fees are broken down into three categories: for duplicating documents, searching for documents that have not been specifically described, and specialized search and review fees, for when a request calls for staff to sift through records that are disclosable as well as those that are not. Requesters will be charged $20 an hour to search for documents and refile them. The charge for attorney time to sort out the public documents from those that are confidential is $150 an hour, or $50 an hour if non-attorney staff undertakes the task. The county will update the requester each time they've run through $50 worth of searching, and the requester can decide then whether or not to make another $50 deposit. Over-and underpayments are to be reconciled when the records are provided. Last week, the Board agreed to create a public records request grant program for local media organizations to request the public records. Curtis told the Board that this would not have an adverse effect on the budget, though the stated reason that public correspondence has not been uploaded to the agendas for most of the year is that the county cannot afford to hire clerks. Supervisor Glenn McGourty asked Curtis if there would be an application and vetting process for people requesting the media grant. “I think that's going to be necessary,” Curtis said. “I don't want to create a program that's going to increase the overall amount of administrative work in a way that exceeds the benefit that's being received…what we're thinking is a relatively short application form. Something that would really just establish some basic criteria and would not require substantial vetting. For most media organizations, I think it's going to be relatively straightforward to determine eligibility and be able to get that on file. I don't know that it's going to have to be exceptionally arduous for the ones that are more borderline. The more we can have simple, objective criteria, whether that's circulation, et cetera. I really want to make sure that I'm clear on this up front. From a First Amendment standpoint, every piece of criteria is going to have to be viewpoint neutral. So we can't look at things like the quality of the reporting, how accurate we think the information is. It's really got to be something that's tied to things like circulation, something that is showing that this is something that is effectively reaching a sufficiently sized audience to be a worthwhile investiture of the public funds and an efficient use of the resources. And then it's really up to the media organizations and what has been referred to as the marketplace of ideas to be able to sort out where to go from there.” I want to say here that I spoke again during public comment, and was encouraged to receive an invitation from County Counsel to work with his office offline to hammer out some of the complexities involved. My situation is that I am employed by KZYX, the public radio station in Mendocino County. I freelance for other outlets, and sometimes people volunteer to help me with research. Often, they wish to remain anonymous. I accepted the invitation at the time, and I remain encouraged by the willingness to consider my input. But I ultimately bowed out of the meeting after reflecting that I do not personally believe the ordinance is perfectable. Michael Katz, the Executive Director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, summed up the experience of many of us who wish to have free and easy access to public documents. “Just limiting it to media is something that is also not necessarily as beneficial as it could be for the whole community,” he argued. “There are many groups here that are engaged actively with the County and the goings-on there, and have constituencies. And there is, due to substantial understaffing…a lack of transparency in certain things. And so in the past when items that could easily have been provided by email have not been, it has been a requirement to go through a public records request process in order to get something that would just normally be seen as a part of the discourse about how to deal with issues that arise between the regulators and those being regulated. So I would encourage, in the spirit of openness that was just expressed…that not just media, but also local associations and groups that are invested and dedicated to the future of Mendocino County can also have access to this important tool.” Curtis maintains that the ordinance is legal. The California Public Records Act does not authorize the fees that are covered by the new ordinance. However, he told the Board that “The Public Records Act comtemplates that the charges might be authorized by other statutes. Specific to counties, there is a mechanism where fees may be charged by statute if the Board chooses to an elective ordinance as long as those fees do not exceed the actual cost of the service to be provided.” Maxell didn't buy any of the arguments. “It seems like the County is just creating more and more layers of staff time and complications on something that is actually fairly simple under California law,” she told the Board. “So I might be able to be eligible for the fund, but someone like Michael should be, too.”

June 23, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors approved the final $355.8 million budget on Tuesday, though some key information is still unavailable. Supervisor John Haschak took up the union's question before the final approval, when he said, “So, we're passing the budget without really knowing what those numbers are, about how many are funded but not filled.” The county appears to be budgeting for 400 unfilled positions. According to SEIU Field Representative Patrick Hickey, 172 of those would be paid for by the general fund. He said 92 of them have been vacant for over a year and a half, and 231 are paid for by state and federal funds. He urged the board to freeze some of the general fund positions, which he calculated would free up millions of dollars, and work vigorously to fill the state and federally funded positions, asserting that “Failure to fill these positions has deprived Mendocino County of vital services that seriously impact our residents. It has also kept tens of millions of state and federal dollars from flowing into our community. This is free money. Let's pay market rate wages to attract the talent we need to serve our community.” The board agreed to direct staff to bring back an agenda item offering increased, market rate wages for state-funded positions. Supervisor Ted Williams also echoed a frequent union refrain, when he specified, “By market rate, we mean enough that people can apply, find housing in our community, et cetera. We don't want vacant positions that are state-funded. One thing about the budget became clear, after Maria Avalos, of UVA, an inland-based Latino advocacy group, asked for more community involvement in the county's decision-making process of awarding the $16.8 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds, which were distributed to help with covid recovery. “I would also suggest that in the future, when community organizations are invited to ask, that the Board of Supervisors would look at our population and see that Latinos make up 25.8% of our population, and that the Spanish-speaking community and Latinos are invited and have a seat at the table as well,” she said during public comment. “I would also ask for transparency on whether the Board of Supervisors has engaged with the public before these funds have been allocated, which was advised.” Supervisors briefly considered bringing the item back, to consider awarding some of the funds to community organizations.But after being told that requests for internal county government uses for the funds were greater than the availability, Supervisors Ted WIlliams and Glenn McGourty decided not to revisit their decision to use it for county services. “I think it would be disingenuous to invite community groups to present, if we know we don't have any funds to award,” Williams said. McGourty added that “I would concur. If there's no money, why have people apply for something that doesn't exist?” The county may use some of the covid money to bolster the new consolidated office of treasurer tax collector and auditor controller. Chamise Cubbison was the only candidate on the ballot and county counsel is preparing an ordinance to appoint her to the new position without paying her both salaries. Former treasurer tax collector Shari Schapmire quit after the board voted 4-1, with Supervisor John Haschak dissenting, to combine the offices. Second in command Julie Forrester's last day is tomorrow. And the outside audit is six months later than usual. Cubbison provided a list of reasons for the tardiness, from staffing shortages to covid to a significant increase in work generated by the receipt of federal funds. The fiscal team with the county executive office prepared the budget this year without the auditor-controller's report . Interim CEO Darcie Antle told the board it was because her office did not receive the report until two months after the budgeting process had already started. In an item only related tangentially to the budget, the board voted unanimously to approve an ordinance establishing fees for public records act requests. The fees range from simple duplication costs to $150 an hour for an attorney's time to sort out disclosable information from material that is exempt from disclosure. If the amount is expected to be more than $50, the person making the request will get an estimate and be asked to pay a $50 deposit. If the deposit runs out before the request is fulfilled, the requester will be asked for another installment. The fees are weighted, which means they are not designed for full cost recovery. County Counsel Christian Curtis estimated that the county receives 4.7 document requests per day, and that fulfilling them takes 20-30% of his attorneys' time. “We've also been seeing an uptick in increasingly complex requests,” he reported, including from companies doing market research. One request stands out for him in particular, where he was included in correspondence with an attorney who made a request from the state. “He indicated that the intent of the request was merely to require the government agency to shuffle around paper.” He added that 5% of the local requests at the county are by one person “upset about a code enforcement issue.” Zack Cinek of Willits, who operates an email newsletter on Substack, objected to the fees, calling the California Public Records Act “a powerful tool for journalists and public alike…this ordinance is in direct conflict with Item E of the Mendocino County strategic plan, that states the county shall increase transparency in government operations to build trust with employees, communities, and partners. It's the same for anybody, media, private citizens, plain and simple: fees deter access to government records.” The Board approved the ordinance, which is based on one in LA County, and asked county counsel to bring back a report in six months and another in a year, to see if it saves staff time.

On today's week-in-review, Crystal is joined by staff writer covering Law and Justice at The Stranger, Will Casey. After another difficult news week across the nation and locally, Crystal and Will wade through the latest controversies facing Washington's police departments. They break down the revelation that SPD has not been investigating adult sexual assault cases, and why this is more of an issue of priorities rather than staffing. They also question Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell's accountability for the actions of the department, which he leads. Next they look into Pierce County Council candidate Josh Harris's shooting of a man Harris alleges stole from him and ask why Auburn's police department put the image of an officer accused of multiple murders on their recruitment banner. For housing news, Crystal and Will question the usefulness of Bruce Harrell's new Homelessness Data Dashboard and ask why landlords are enraged over the Seattle City Council's proposal to ask them to report the rents they're charging renters. Finally, the show wraps up with a check-in on controversy surrounding former Mayor Jenny Durkan's missing text messages, and how it's one example of why Washington's Public Records Act needs to be updated to meet our modern era.  As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Will Casey, at @willjcasey. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.   Resources “Seattle police stopped investigating new adult sexual assaults this year, memo shows” by Sydney Brownstone and Ashley Hiruko from The Seattle Times and KUOW: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/seattle-police-halted-investigating-adult-sexual-assaults-this-year-internal-memo-shows/   “Auburn officer charged with murder featured on department's recruiting banner” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/auburn-officer-charged-with-murder-featured-on-departments-recruiting-banner/   “This Auburn cop killed 3 and injured others. His department didn't stop him — outsiders did” by Ashley Hiruko and Liz Brazile from KUOW:https://www.kuow.org/stories/this-auburn-cop-killed-3-and-injured-others-it-took-outsiders-to-stop-him   “Pierce County candidate with pro-law enforcement platform shoots at suspected car thief”  by Patrick Malone from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/pierce-county-candidate-with-pro-law-enforcement-platform-shoots-at-suspected-car-thief/    “Seattle greenlights minimum wages for app-based delivery drivers” by MyNorthwest Staff from MYNorthwest: https://mynorthwest.com/3499857/seattle-city-council-passes-payup-legislation/    “Harrell's New Homelessness Data Dashboard Invites More Questions Than It Answers” by ​​Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/06/02/the-urbanist-podcast-harrells-new-homelessness-data-dashboard-invites-more-questions-than-it-answers/    “How Many Dashboards Does it Take to Build a House?” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/05/31/74506931/how-many-dashboards-does-it-take-to-build-a-house   “Pedersen Pisses Off Seattle Landlords: Is the rent too high? The City wants to know, but landlords don't want to say” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/06/01/74545296/pedersen-pisses-off-seattle-landlords “Did Our Last Mayor Commit a Felony? Washington's Public Records Act Needs An Overhaul” by Will Casey from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/06/02/74581748/did-our-last-mayor-commit-a-felony   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those during the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced on the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome to the program for the first time today, today's co-host: staff writer covering Law and Justice at The Stranger, Will Casey. [00:00:55] Will Casey: Thanks for having me, Crystal - excited to be here. [00:00:57] Crystal Fincher: Hey, excited for you to be here - excited that you're at The Stranger covering Law and Justice. We all need great coverage of law and justice and wow, there is no shortage of law and justice news this week. So want to start by discussing a revelation that made my jaw drop, and made me gasp, and made me absolutely infuriated and perplexed - the news that Seattle police stopped investigating new adult sexual assault cases this year. What is going on? [00:01:34] Will Casey: Well, the mayor would like you to believe that a staffing shortage at the Seattle Police Department is responsible for their inability to process these new allegations of sexual assaults. To be specific, they are still investigating cases that involve children, but these are for new allegations of assault against an adult. And unfortunately, the mayor's not really telling the whole story there because other police departments in our area and nationally are also dealing with the labor shortage, but they have not made the same decisions in terms of how they allocate their existing staff out of the unit that's supposed to be handling these kinds of cases. [00:02:19] Crystal Fincher: That's right. And even within our department, every type of department has not seen decreases. They have moved people out of these investigative positions into other roles. What does that look like in the police department? [00:02:37] Will Casey: Well, so you probably heard a lot last year, during the mayoral campaign, about 911 response times. This is the frequent calling card of the more-law-and-order folks who want to conjure this image of - this resident's in distress, trying to get help and not having it come, while they're presumably being made the victim of a crime. Well, here we have actual victims of real crimes who are trying to ask for help from the Seattle Police Department and getting basically silenced. So, while they've shifted deputies and investigators out of this unit, they're moving people into things like these hotspot policing efforts or other just general patrol duties in attempts to presumably reduce those 911 response times. [00:03:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And operation support has seen an increase, actually, in the amount of personnel allocated to that in the past couple years, despite the shortage - as they're calling it and dealing with it - the shortage of police that we have here. And just what is the rationale behind saying these other things are priorities more than investigating violent sexual assault? [00:04:00] Will Casey: Honestly, I can't personally vouch for the rationale that's backing this up. The only comment that our City leaders have offered on the record to The Seattle Times here is just that the mayor finds this situation "unacceptable." They noted that they tried to interview several other City councilmembers about the issue - they all ducked from being interviewed on the record. Chief Diaz says that - if we don't have an officer to respond to the sexual assault, then we're never going to be able to have the follow-up to investigate it. And so that's - and at least from him - why they seem to be maintaining the patrolling staffing levels rather than this investigative situation. But that doesn't really seem to be offering much comfort to the advocates for survivors of sexual assault who are bringing these criticisms to the public's attention. [00:04:54] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And beyond that, it continues to be perplexing to me how the mayor is finding himself becoming aware of this right now. As the executive of the City, he is in charge of this department - the police chief reports to him. Lots of people - I hear talking about the Council - the Council can pass policy, they can fund things. But operationally, administratively - all of that falls under the control of the mayor's office. So how - one, either how does the mayor not know this is happening, or are they doing this despite different direction - which we've seen examples of that happening before - where is the disengagement? How is it okay that policy like this is being enacted and the mayor doesn't know? Are there any steps taken to get answers about that, to address that? How are they saying they plan to increase monitoring of what's going on within the police department if stuff like this is happening without him being notified of it? [00:05:58] Will Casey: It's hard to say, honestly. And I think that there's some other details here in The Seattle Times report that really call into question the mayor's surprise - that at least that he's expressed - about this issue. Because it seems as though he doesn't have any difficulty getting SPD to allocate resources when he does have a policy interest in something - so notably the department's alternative response team, which is the unit that responds to homeless encampment removals. Monisha Harrell on the show a couple of weeks ago - that unit is now staffed by twice the number of officers on the sexual assault unit, after an additional seven patrol officers were added to that unit. And then you also have twelve detectives, compared to the four in the sexual assault investigation units, devoted to property crimes. So that's three times the number of detectives we have - looking at things like catalytic converter thefts, as opposed to sexual violence. So I don't know, maybe the mayor has an explanation for that, but it's not one that's been heard by the public thus far, at least. [00:07:07] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's perplexing, especially as we're hearing plans from the City Attorney for people who would previously be eligible for Drug Court or other court - that they're cracking down harder on them. How is it that we are finding ways to invest more, change policy, apply resources in different directions when they have an initiative, when they have an idea - but stuff like this has to be uncovered by reporters outside of the City to even begin to get answers or to see what's happening. It's just really, really perplexing and outrageous, especially given so much work done legislatively to make sure that all of the things downstream, especially when it comes to sexual assault, are being investigated, are they taking rape kits and processing those in a timely fashion. And I don't think anyone anticipated that the next problem we were going to be encountering is just police deciding not to investigate sexual assault at all. And if you're trying to project a safer image for the City and that you're taking action to make people safer, which is absolutely necessary, it seems like this would be a critical component of that. So it just feels very disjointed, very disappointing, and really infuriating that these decisions can be made that are so at odds with public safety. Another thing at odds, seemingly, with public safety that we saw this week was with Pierce County Council candidate, Josh Harris, who's running on a pro-law enforcement platform. People may be familiar with his name from a while back when he bailed out the police who had killed Manny Ellis - very, very problematic. Well, just recently he decided to go into an encampment where he felt some things had been stolen and engaged in an altercation with someone. The altercation escalated, police were - the story's murky - police were there, told him to stand back and stand by, somehow the person who they were engaging with got into a car. They're saying that the car went in the direction of Josh Harris and potentially charged at him. Josh Harris, then in front of police, fired into this car - does not seem like police fired into that car - really confusing what happened. And then somehow this person was not stopped, wound up back in the encampment - where Harris and a partner went in and took some things they said were stolen. They didn't say they were stolen from them, they didn't say how they knew that there were stolen, they were just a variety of things that evidently they're characterizing as stolen and we're not questioning this yet. But it just seems like we have seen more incidences of people feeling like they can go into encampments and communities where people are living, who don't have other shelter, and just assume that they're places of crime - to have no problem victimizing people, don't seem to have to substantiate whether or not something was indeed stolen, and hey - if something's stolen, someone should be able to get it back. We have processes for that that people should follow. But seeing this escalate to violence, seeing people go into these encampments armed with guns is just asking for a violent situation to happen. It's asking for people to get shot and killed. There have been several examples of this happening and why is this person running for office - who seems to have some kind of a complex that he needs to go and do this macho thing - it just seems really problematic. This is someone running for office in Pierce County right now, and I hope more people start talking about this and examining this and really getting to the details of this situation and his prior situations. 'Cause there seems to be a history of problematic or questionable activity here. Just really concerning. [00:11:37] Will Casey: Yeah, and the only thing I have to add to that is - this is not an isolated trend, data point here, right? We're seeing across the country, in contested Republican primary after primary, this is just becoming part of - this vigilantism is becoming part of their mainstream rhetoric. And I think that that's - frankly, very deeply troubling for our ability to continue to maintain our democracy and yeah, not the kind of moral leadership you'd like. But the sad fact is I doubt there are very many of his base voters who are going to have a problem with this behavior. [00:12:16] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and that's the challenge. And I just hope that, as these things that happen are covered, that they're covered critically and that facts are verified and that accounts are verified because the framing of this sometimes seems really problematic. And it's just also worth mentioning the fact that although we have some real troubling characterizations and narratives about unhoused people and crime, the fact is that there are few people in society who are more frequently victims of crime than the unhoused population. It's a very, very vulnerable place to be - there was talk this week about potentially - Reagan Dunn, actually, introduced the idea of basically mapping where every unhoused person is and stays. And there's just a ton of concern by a lot of people about that. Because one, as we just said, unhoused people are already extremely vulnerable, are frequently victims of crime, are much more vulnerable than most of the rest of us. And we have seen, from reporters who have been very inappropriate in the way that they have tracked down and covered and photographed and videotaped folks in these encampments, and people feeling like they are entitled - if they know where one of them is - to walk in, to harass them, to assault people there. We've seen this happen several times. And so anytime you target a group and just point a big red arrow at them and say there they are, while simultaneously dehumanizing them with rhetoric and talking about how much of a problem they are - we know that's a recipe for violence, and we know that's a recipe for targeting. So no, we don't want to do that and that's a bad thing, Reagan Dunn - among the number of variety of bad things that Reagan Dunn seems like he's doubling down on doing. But aside from that, also - Auburn, City of Auburn, featured a police officer - who is currently charged with murder - who is featured on the department's recruiting banner. They were at an event, banner sitting here - big picture, officer's smiling - well, it's an officer who's charged for murder. What is the deal here, Will? [00:14:43] Will Casey: When you literally have a poster boy for your department being someone who's currently facing an accusation of murder and has a history of killing several other civilians while on duty, that's a problem. And I think, especially in this atmosphere of new-found focus not just on big city police departments, like Seattle's, but also how these same dynamics are playing out frequently with far less oversight in these smaller towns and cities throughout the state. And I think - what this shows is that there's a culture issue here in Auburn, at least in their police departments, with not being concerned, apparently, with the image that they're projecting into the community. And this is not someone who, at least from my perspective, it seems like you'd want to be holding out as a representative of the kinds of officers you're looking to hire, if you're really interested in changing the culture of the police department. KUOW has done a fantastic investigative series documenting all of the various moments throughout this officer's lengthy career - where he's been involved in violence repeatedly, has not found not been held accountable for any kind of discipline. And frankly, you shouldn't have to look at anything other than his own hands to tell you that he's someone you should be worried about. He's got tattoos that show - frankly, very common slogan - I guess, is the right word, motif - among the more extreme police officers that refer to being judged by 12 - meaning 12 jurors in a courtroom, presumably for reviewing some sort of act of violence that they engaged in, rather than carried by 6, which is - or 8 sometimes - referred to pallbearers bearing a coffin. And this is kind of warrior mentality where you're always under threat, the people who you're supposed to be protecting and serving are a constant possible source of danger to you, and if you "fear for your life" - that really does need to shift. This particular officer also has a combat veteran background, and there have been reports from within the department of people trying to get the Auburn PD to take some practice steps, get him some specialized counseling that may be necessary for someone adjusting to a civilian, law enforcement position. And it's just apparently never stuck. So, we have a lot more work to do in following the story and keeping everyone's attention trained on it - that pending murder charge will next be at issue in the public, possibly this September, because the judge overseeing that case just had to issue a continuance in the scheduled trial date for June. [00:17:56] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and just the family dealing with this - it's really hard. The family is very disappointed, very dismayed that - one, this officer did have a history, it was not addressed before. Unfortunately, he killed their family member and egregious enough - we all know how high the bar is for a police officer to get charged - he is charged. He's just waiting to go on trial, and unfortunately this trial keeps being delayed, which is very painful for the family. And just - there are people attached to this, these are real stakes and real people who are being impacted by this. And it just makes it that much more insulting that all of this is there - that we talk about wanting to keep people safe and healthy and whole, and treating people with dignity and respect - and wow, how this is not happening in the operations. And I just cannot - I cannot imagine being a family member of this person and then reading that he's literally the poster boy for the department. Just very, very disappointing. The department did say - well, hey, this is an old poster, this was before this happened and before he was charged with murder. It didn't happen before he killed other people - he has killed two other people, injured others aside from that. And so, they are putting that kind of behavior and history and record up on display. And so the question is, so who are you actually looking to recruit with this? What message are you sending? What does it say about the culture of the department? And I just hope that we begin to grapple with those questions as a community because it's absolutely necessary. In some better news this week, Seattle City Council passed PayUp legislation. What does this do? [00:19:56] Will Casey: Effectively, this is going to give a whole slew of app-based gig workers - finally - a minimum wage, which is a huge, huge deal. There's a little bit of back and forth in the final version of the law that got passed - Councilmember Alex Pedersen introduced a late amendment that did exclude a certain category of workers from the legislation, which was strange because he was the original sponsor of the bill. So it's not often you see - [00:20:26] Crystal Fincher: Andrew Lewis! [00:20:27] Will Casey: Oh, I'm sorry - did I say - yes, yes, yes - sorry, I made the frequent mistake of confusing him with the two other squishy progressives from the Council - my apologies to Andrew. But yeah, so anyway, he did undermine his own bill here in a relatively strange move that he said was to "take down the temperature on the issue." But that didn't really seem to happen because advocates for the workers are very upset that that exemption was inserted last minute into the legislation. But the large takeaway here is - this is still a significant step forward for a large class of employees who - Uber and Lyft, and these similar-style companies have been fighting tooth and nail in every state that tries to do this - to keep these people from getting a fair wage. So, let's not look a gift horse in the mouth here, I guess. [00:21:21] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. This is a step forward - it does meaningfully help a lot of drivers in the City, so this is a good thing, this is helpful. It would have been nice if it could be good for more people - we talked about that a lot last week. Councilmember Tammy Morales did offer an amendment that was passed that says they will take up legislation for the people left out of this bill - the marketplace workers who were excluded from this bill in that amendment that you just spoke about - that they will take that up by August of 2023. So there is now a date attached to it. One of the issues last week was - yeah, we'll get to it. But there was nothing concrete following that, there was no - well, when are you going to get to it, when are you going to address it if it's not here. And so now we do have a date, so hopefully app-based, or marketplace app-based workers, will also be included. But that's a very positive thing, very helpful. A number of these app-based service companies were very much in opposition to this, certainly were pushing for the amendment that Councilmember Lewis eventually passed for this bill. But it is a step forward, and I do not think it is too much to say that everyone deserves to make the minimum wage. And that just because you have figured out some technological loopholes does not absolve you with the responsibility for paying people who you're profiting from - to be clear, who you're profiting very handsomely from - a minimum wage. It's the least that should be done. So this week also, in City of Seattle news, Mayor Harrell introduced a new homelessness dashboard. What happened here? [00:23:09] Will Casey: Well, we've got a bunch of the data we already have now being aggregated into one place with some data visualization that made a tech worker friend of mine send me a long string of Twitter DMs talking about how terribly organized and poorly visualized the data is. And so - and his criticism is not the only one. My colleague at The Stranger, Hannah Krieg, had an excellent piece talking to some of the folks at Tech 4 Housing, who are experts in this field, and included an excellent breakdown of - that basically this dashboard presents the point of view that homelessness is a problem for the people seeing it, rather than for those who are experiencing the lack of shelter. And for me personally, I think this is going to be - a little bit of background here - part of the reason that the City is so concerned with visualizing this data and proving that they have the shelter capacity is that there's a federal lawsuit out of the Ninth Circuit, which is where Seattle resides, that effectively makes it illegal to do the encampments sweeps that the administration has been engaging in, unless there's adequate shelter available for everyone who's being forced to move. And so that's why you'll hear City officials so focused on this idea of referrals and saying that they had available capacity, without really ever getting into the details of - are you actually getting these people housing? Just - it was available, technically. And so we can't be punished by the courts for sweeping the problem to some other part of the city. [00:24:50] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it is - it is a challenge. And we've certainly talked about before, talked about even last week, the issue with that shelter - just because we're hearing shelter is available, an offer of services was made, does actually not mean that those services were applicable to the person who they were made to. Someone may have a job that requires them to work hours later than the shelter will accept people. Well, the offer was made - that person couldn't accept them - and you're making someone choose between having a job and spending a night somewhere. And to be clear, many of these shelters, it is a night. This is not housing. This is oftentimes a bed. If we're talking about congregate shelter, those for a variety of reasons can - not be safe places, not be places that help people become more stable. And oftentimes in these shelters, you have to leave early in the morning with all of your possessions - it's not an easy thing to do. Anyone suggesting that people who are unhoused are somehow getting by in the system, or doing this because it's easy, or because they're lazy - does not understand what being out on the street is actually like. It's a dangerous place, it's a scary place, it's a very destabilizing place. And to help people get back to the point where they can find stability for housing requires stabilizing so many things in their lives that are made worse by the trauma and experience of being on the street. So it is actually important - if we're going to solve this issue, there has to be housing for people, not a shelter bed. I am pretty fed up with just talking about shelter bed capacity. Is it better than nothing? Sometimes, actually not all the time. And we actually need, we do need to have capacity to get people out of extreme heat or extreme cold, those situations, but we are doing nothing to address the problem. And in fact, making it worse if we just force people to start over and over and over again, get the little bit of their lives and stability that they've gotten, and the bit of community that they've built to help them try and - one, just stay alive and two, get things together enough where they can just get a little bit more and get more stable - to just keep sweeping and moving and sweeping and moving. And it just is not working, and for as much money as we're spending on all of this sweeping, on all of the resources going into this - we could be spending that on housing, we could be spending that on services. We are throwing a ton of money at this in ways that are only moving people around and not getting anyone actually off the street, or very few people off the street, while more people are falling into homelessness. So it's - if you listen to this show, you know how frequently frustrated this is. But I - yes, this is a dashboard. Yes, we are tracking this. I want it to be more than checking off a box to justify sweeps. And I think that's the bottom line. And I am hoping to see some evidence that this is coming online. There has been hopeful talk. There has been talk about providing services - there've been too many sweeps that have not had them at all. And so when is it going to start? I would like to see that more than a dashboard in terms of this. But we will continue to follow how this progresses - it has just been frustrating to continue to watch us relocate people and not do that. Also want to cover - this week, an interesting situation with talk about requiring landlords to disclose the rent that they're paying. What is happening here? [00:28:49] Will Casey: Well, it seems like Alex Pedersen - I'm getting my white male councilmembers correct now - might've pissed off a few members of his base in pushing forward this legislation. It actually caused a relatively interesting 5-4 split among the Seattle City Council. It wasn't your traditional divide between conservatives and progressive factions. On the conservative side, you had Sara Nelson and Debora Juarez voting No - each of them had their own reasons. Dan Strauss and Teresa Mosqueda also voted No - Mosqueda mostly due to the budget concerns with implementing this bill. But he did get support from Andrew Lewis, Lisa Herbold, Tammy Morales, and Kshama Sawant - who are all in favor because in their perspective, if you're already doing the paperwork to advertise the units and pay taxes on the income that you're gathering from these investments - passively I might add - it shouldn't be that much more of an effort to collect some of that data and report it to the City on a regular basis so that we actually have an idea of what it costs to live here. It'd be very, very helpful for a lot of things the City's trying to do. [00:30:10] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. A number of cities across the country are moving in this direction - Seattle is not unique in doing this. And originally I misspoke - I said the rent that landlords are paying, I meant to say the rent that they're charging - but this is good and useful information. And absolutely will help inform policy and determine what is appropriate, what is not appropriate, and what action could or should be taken to help address this affordability crisis which we are absolutely in the middle of. And so having this happen is - having landlords at the table is perfectly fine, but we need all of the information. If they're giving us input on how this might be onerous or how this is affecting their ability to do this or that, then let's see the data for that. We ask that for so many other people and so many other ways - hey, to get rent assistance, we make people divulge lots of things about their income and living situation and personal life - and the hoops that they have to jump through just to do that. They're asking for a ton of information from renters about their qualifications, they're running background checks. We're only asking for them to divulge the rent that supposedly they're advertising what they're charging - they may be unhappy for people to see if they raise the rent in exorbitant amounts. I know a number of people who've had their rent raised by over 30%. Someone close to me had their rent raised by over 45% - it's egregious, and so this is an issue that I'm sure that they may not want lots of visibility on, but - hey, everyone else is required to put in a whole lot of information, to divulge a lot of information - we're in a crisis. This is the least they could do. And to the point that Hannah Krieg covered, and that you mentioned, they're already doing it. We're just organizing it in the same place - for a dashboard - we know how much the City loves the dashboard. Let's get a dashboard together. But I think this is a good situation, I commend Alex Pedersen for stepping up to address this crisis, for talking about this very common sense, really low-effort step that can be taken to help get more information on how we can solve this. And understanding that his constituents are his residents and people who are afraid of being priced out of the places where they're at. The City has - about half of its residents are renters. This is a pressing issue for so many people, so commend him and the rest of the councilmembers who did vote to support this. It's really important. And people really are expecting action to be taken. And so I'm happy that they're heeding that call. Another issue this week that we've talked about before and that you covered was - hey, what's going on with those texts that were deleted? Was that a felon - like it wasn't supposed to happen. They're saying it's a crime, a serious crime - a felony in fact - for things like that to happen. And so the question has been, are you going to refer this for investigation? Who can do this? Why isn't it done? What is going on? [00:33:34] Will Casey: Well, this was a very wonderful deep dive into a realm of a lot of people not wanting to admit anything was their fault, which is a lovely place to be. And as - I cannot believe I'm about to say this, but this is the cost of not having an effective opposition party - because if King County had a Republican Party that was remotely capable of winning any elections, we'd have a partisan incentive for someone to dig into the truth of what's going on here. And we'd actually benefit from a little bit of competition, but currently everyone who's involved. [00:34:14] Crystal Fincher: Well, the Republican Party has resources that make them effective as an opposition party, but there could be other opposition parties that were stood up - technically it wouldn't have to be a Republican Party, although they are more integrated statutorily into our system. But anyway - keep going. [00:34:29] Will Casey: Yes, yes, yes - trust me, I'm the last person who's going to wish for success for any Republican candidates. But my point being that this is a situation where - normally, this is where the political realities of government tend to work towards the interests of people actually finding out what's going on. Instead - here, we have a bunch of political allies - Bob Ferguson at the Attorney General's office, Governor Inslee, Dan Satterberg - all kind of just doing the Spiderman meme of pointing at each other and saying - it's your responsibility to kick this off. But actually, in reporting this out this week, what I learned is that the real culprit here, I think, is just a lack of stewardship at the Legislature in how this law is written. So the Public Records Act has been updated several times, it's something that voters put onto the books through initiatives at various points in Washington State's history - that part of the law is very well tended to. However, it only really includes civil penalties for agencies who fail to produce a given record on the required timeline, or if there is some other - hey, they're being overly aggressive about the redactions that they're making in providing these sorts of records. So there's a specific grant of civil action authority for any private person to sue a government agency and say - hey, you were supposed to get me this record by X date. It's now Y date. Where's the paper? The problem is there's also a separate law on the books in a different part of the RCWs that makes the willful destruction of a public record a felony. And that's what the publicly available information suggests Mayor Durkan and/or former Chief of Seattle Police Department Carmen Best may have done with their messages. That law was last substantively amended in 1909. And in speaking with legislative staff, they agreed with my guess - which is that this was something that's a relic of back in the pioneer days - when one small town would lead a raid onto somebody else's records office and burn all of the deeds so that they could just take over their farms or mining stakes or whatever. So what needs to happen, in the next legislative session, is for the Legislature to specifically grant the authority of - either to the County Prosecutor or the Attorney General - but basically make it very clear that if we ever encounter a situation like this again, there's a very specific person whose job it is to investigate. And so we don't end up with this farcical game of hot potato that's going on right now. [00:37:15] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it is farcical - to be clear. And even - you touched on in the article that you wrote, which we will be including in the show notes, along with the other articles that we've discussed - was that - just incentives for accountability aren't there, they're actually pointing in the other direction. And so if there is no expectation that - hey, if I do something that I shouldn't do here, or if there's no record of other people being held accountable for those same things. And - hey, it would be easy for me to do this thing that I'm not supposed to do, and then just cover up that I did the thing that I'm not supposed to do - because the penalties of doing what I'm not supposed to do are greater than just covering it up and all that kind of stuff. And this is what we see. And especially that it was not just one person, it was multiple people involved in these incidences, and so it seems like - hey, we are trying to get rid of a record of what happened. And so many troubling things that happened - this is around the time when the precinct was abandoned. And again another issue of just - we find out that either there is no control or negligence or a refusal to own decisions that were made from the Mayor's office - but very troubling things that are happening that the public is owed - is literally owed - and just no accountability for that. So there needs to be, this should not be a my-team-versus-your-team type of thing. As we've seen in so many different instances, if we let this go now and even if - hey, well, that's my buddy, that's my team, that's my party, whatever it is - someone else is going to get a hold of it that you don't like and do worse. We have seen so many different examples of this. These are just good governance things that should not only apply to people who you are in opposition to politically - they're best when they apply to everyone, and they serve everyone better when they do apply to everyone, and we should find out what happened with these and there should be accountability attached to that. And I just wish we would take that more seriously. It would do a lot to create more trust in people in institutions. We're at a time right now where there is a crisis of confidence in all of our institutions, and only bad things happen in society when people lose trust in the institutions that are supposed to provide an orderly way of resolving disputes, find out information, talking about who has power and how they're able to wield it - all of those things. If we don't trust, if the public doesn't trust how that happens, then people start to take things into their own hands and use their own means - and that never turns out well, it never ends peacefully. [00:40:22] Will Casey: Yeah, and I think that there are some people who I think are looking at this as - oh, there's just a couple of people who've got it out for Mayor Durkan and they just don't want to let this go or move on - and we need to unify and heal after the 2020 protests. And I cannot disagree with that strongly enough - because in criminal law, we talk all the time about how we have to have these harsh sentences as a deterrent for criminal behavior, as if someone who has no other way to put food on the table except for stealing that food is going to think about the consequences of like - oh, well, down the line, this is going to mean X, Y, or Z for me. But here - these are sophisticated actors, right? These are people with power and leverage and public office who have the ability to make a cold, calculated decision about whether or not - how likely it is - they're going to get caught. And if they are, how bad are the consequences going to be, really? And we've already seen this trend continue in a disturbing way. This didn't make it into the piece that I wrote this week, but it's been reported elsewhere. We've seen similar issues with deleting texts at the Washington Redistricting Commission when they just blew past their midnight deadline. And voted without actually having maps in front of them. And so I think that this is a live issue, this is a real problem for people's faith in government, as you pointed out. And it's frankly, not that hard to fix - one-line amendment to say it shall be the responsibility of the Attorney General's office to investigate whenever there has been a destroyed public record - would solve this entire problem. [00:42:03] Crystal Fincher: It would, and it certainly needs solving and we certainly should have some accountability to this. I'm sure we'll be talking more about this subject more in the future as developments unfold, but it's just a challenge. There's lots that's been challenging this week, lately. We don't even get into the national stuff here - that's enough. And then just to see these types of events and headlines on a local level is challenging, but it is possible to create positive change. There are some good things happening and ways that we can all engage to make this better. And part of what we want to do in talking about this is to - like we say - understand what's happening, and why it's happening, and what we can do about it. And we see what's happening, and got further insight into the why this week and the levers that we can use to fix it. And so certainly is something that people need to do - is to advocate with their legislators that - hey, this is something that is an easy fix, a quick fix, and that should be fixed, and that we're expecting to be fixed. So hopefully that does happen. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks today, this Friday, June 3rd, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistant producer Shannon Cheng and help with Bryce Cannatelli. Our wonderful co-host today is staff writer covering law and justice - and if it wasn't clear to people, who is also a lawyer who is a reporter, which is helpful when reporting on law and justice and it shows - Will Casey. You can find Will on Twitter @willjcasey - that's C-A-S-E-Y. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

In this episode, we discuss how one state's Public Records Act is reconciled with trade secret protections.  We also address trade secret identification at pleadings, and a recent decision interpreting the supersession doctrine.  

Thousands of homes in the state's southeast are still in the firing line of Queensland's deadly deluge as a perfect storm of high tide and roaring floodwaters forge a new threat.  A former integrity head claims Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk breached the Public Records Act when her former chief of staff's resignation letter disappeared, but he was barred from making his finding.  The actions of officers who shot a knife-wielding man have been defended by Queensland Police Union president Ian Leavers. Clive Palmer has purchased Adolf Hitler's bulletproof Mercedes-Benz... For updates and breaking news throughout the day, take out a subscription at COURIERMAIL.com.au/     See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dagli archivi di SBS Italian: solo un anno fa sono state rese accessibili al pubblico le minute del processo per l'omicidio di "Fat Joe" Versace, rimaste protette per 75 anni sotto la Section 9 del Public Records Act del Victoria.

Teachers Union Sues Rhode Island Mom for Seeking Records About School's Critical Race Theory Curriculum‼️ Virginia Allen / @Virginia_Allen5 / August 05, 2021   The National Education Association is suing mother Nicole Solas after she filed multiple public records requests with the South Kingstown School District in Rhode Island requesting information about the schools' teaching of critical race theory. (Photo: Podfoto/ Getty Images) The National Education Association, America's largest teachers union, is suing a Rhode Island mom for seeking information about what her kindergartener will be taught in school.  Both the National Education Association Rhode Island and National Education Association South Kingstown, the union's local branch, are suing Nicole Solas after she filed public record requests with the South Kingstown School District to learn what students are being taught regarding critical race theory.  “It appears … [the teachers union wants] a court to say I can't get the public information that I'm requesting because it will somehow harm teachers,” Solas told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Thursday.  The complaint was filed with the Rhode Island Superior Court on Monday and a constable arrived at Solas' home on Wednesday to deliver papers informing the mother of the lawsuit.   “I just got served with a lawsuit from the teacher union, NEARI,” Solas wrote on Twitter. “Throwing down the gauntlet, are we? Game on.” On Thursday, the union also filed for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Solas. The legal action is intended to prohibit the South Kingstown school board from “responding to public record requests referenced in the Verified Complaint, unless and until a determination can be made that such documents are required to be released pursuant to the Access to Public Records Act,” the court filing reads.   “Today, the teacher union NEA filed ANOTHER lawsuit against me – this time a Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction,” Solas tweeted. “Will teacher unions bullying moms be an everyday thing now?” Over the past few months, Solas has filed more than 200 public records requests with the South Kingstown School District, about 30 miles south of Providence, Rhode Island.  In April, the principal of the elementary school told Solas to file records requests after the mother emailed the principal asking for a copy of the curriculum and other information about the school district.  Solas was told that due to the breadth of her questions, she needed to file records requests, which she did.  In June, the South Kingstown school board threatened to sue Solas over the requests she was making. Ultimately, the school board voted not to take legal action against her. But now, the union representing South Kingstown teachers has filed a 30-page suit against her.  The teachers union is asking the court to “prohibit the disclosure of non-public records” and for the court to use a “balancing test” to assess whether or not teachers' “personally identifiable and other personnel-related information” must be released, according to the complaint.  The National Education Association Rhode Island “laid out a lot of reasons [in the complaint] why some of the information I requested may not be subject to public disclosure, but that is all controlled under the Rhode Island Access to Public Records Act, and the School Committee attorneys would be making all those decisions themselves,” Solas said.  She added that if the “teachers union believes that the School Committee attorney made a wrong decision on the release of information, the teachers union can certainly sue the school.” Instead, Solas is the one being sued.  “I think this is purely an intimidation tactic,” Solas said of the lawsuit.  The complaint is outlined in 70 points detailing why the information Solas is requesting should not be released, including concerns over a conservative group's reporting of educators teaching critical race theory.  Point 70 reads:  Given the circumstances of the requests, it is likely that any teachers who are identifiable and have engaged in discussions about things like critical race theory will then be the subject of teacher harassment by national conservative groups opposed to critical race theory. Appendix C of the complaint includes two news stories covering the South Kingstown school board's threat to sue Solas in June. The first is from Legal Insurrection, which first covered the story, and the second is from The Daily Signal.  Solas says that it appears that the teachers union is seeking to act as a “third-party intermediary” to decide whether or not she can receive the public information she is requesting.  “I hope teachers see this lawsuit as the last straw of their union's decades-long denigration of their profession,” Solas said. “I hope teachers leave the union because they refuse to fund litigation that harasses and bullies mothers who exercise their civil right to access public information about their children's education.” The young mom is being represented by the Goldwater Institute, a conservative public policy and ligation organization based in Phoenix.  “Rhode Island law does not authorize what the [National Education Association] is attempting to do here,” Goldwater lawyer Jon Riches told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Thursday.  “Nicole did what any conscientious parent would do,” Riches added. “She sought out information about what her child is going to learn, and from Day One, she was stonewalled. First, she was stonewalled by the district. Now, she is being intimidated by the union.”  The Daily Signal reached out to the National Education Association Rhode Island for comment and received a prepared statement in response with a quote from Deputy Executive Director Jennifer Azevedo. We are asking the Court to conduct a balancing test to determine whether our members' privacy rights outweigh the public interest. We believe they do, and those records should either not be disclosed or should be redacted accordingly. Multiple APRA requests were made in recent months to the South Kingstown School Department demanding detailed information about specific educators and members in general of NEA South Kingstown, our local NEARI educator affiliate.  While NEARI and NEASK support access to public information, the organizations firmly believe in protecting the rights, safety, and privacy of its members and will continue to advocate strongly on their behalf. We look forward to the Court's declaratory judgement. “As long as such information does not include ‘personally identifiable information,' which legally must be kept confidential, the NEA's request for a behind-closed-doors review with the judge in this case, in addition to previous statements about wanting not to distract from ‘equity efforts' by fulfilling Solas' requests, indicates that whatever the school board is teaching, it very much wants to hide,” Sarah Parshall Perry, a legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)  Even though Solas has now enrolled her daughter in a private school, both she and the Goldwater Institute are prepared to move forward with the lawsuit in an effort to stand up for parents across the nation who are concerned about their child being taught critical race theory and other leftist ideology in the classroom.  “They made the wrong mom mad,” said Solas, who added that the fight is about so much more than simply her own records requests. This is about parents having a right to know what their child's education is. This is about not being bullied by a teacher union who wants to challenge a stay-at-home mom for asking questions about education. And this is about open government.  The actions of the teachers union are “unacceptable,” Riches said. “It's not going to stand. We are going to fight back every step of the way. Nicole is not going to be intimidated.”  Correction: This piece was corrected after publication to accurately state that the lawsuit was filed in the Rhode Island Superior Court. Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we'll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.  The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now                 @Virginia_Allen5 Virginia Allen Virginia Allen is a news producer for The Daily Signal. She is the co-host of The Daily Signal Podcast and Problematic Women. Send an email to Virginia.

Following a 2019 pay-to-play scandal, California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara agreed to be transparent about its details. After a year and half of litigation over Public Records Act requests that are unanswered, Consumer Watchdog has found Lara in overt violation of the Public Records Act. Consumer Watchdog's Litigation Director Jerry Flanagan discusses the case with President Jamie Court.

Rhode Island mother Nicole Solas is taking action against her daughter's school district for refusing to share information on race theory-based curriculum. Solas joined "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Thursday to express her frustration with district management, and shared that school guidelines bar teachers from calling their students "boys and girls" and rethinks the American foundations of Thanksgiving. After Solas' inquiry on curriculum via public records request through the Access to Public Records Act, a member of the school board accused her of being "racist" during a public hearing. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/hollywoodandchinadollshow/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hollywoodandchinadollshow/support

You're listening to the Westerly Sun's podcast, where we talk about the best local events, new job postings, obituaries, and more. First, a bit of Rhode Island trivia. Today's trivia is brought to you by Perennial.  Perennial's new plant-based drink “Daily Gut & Brain” is a blend of easily digestible nutrients crafted for gut and brain health. A convenient mini-meal, Daily Gut & Brain” is available now at the CVS Pharmacy in Wakefield. Now for some trivia. Did you know that Academy Award nominated actress, Ruth Hussey, was born in Rhode Island? She struggled to break through as an actress and worked in Providence as a radio fashion commentator and wrote ad copy for a Providence clothing store for their radio spots. She finally started to make it big in the theater and then transitioned to movies in 1937. She got her big break as Elizabeth Imbrie in The Philadelphia Story opposite Jimmy Stewart, Katherine Hepburn, and Cary Grant where she was nominated for best supporting actress. She continued to act until 1973.   Now for our feature story: Taxpayers, not town officials, will pay a $2,500 fine as part of a settlement aimed at resolving town officials' violation of the state Access to Public Records Act, according to the town attorney William J. Conley Jr., whose Providence-based law firm has served as town attorney since 2017, wrote to a resident on Tuesday and said the payment would come from the town budget. "Since your complaint against the town of Westerly related to official town business and complains of acts or omissions within the town's official duties in responding to requests made under the Access to Public Records statute, any assessment of a fine related thereto would be against a public body and would be paid by the town from its General Fund," Conley wrote in a letter to resident James Angelo, who filed the original request for documents and a subsequent Access to Public Records complaint to the state Attorney General's Office. Angelo was seeking documents related to town officials' decision to administratively subdivide the former Bradford Dyeing Association property as part of a receivership case that includes an effort to market the property. Administrative subdivisions are carried out by officials on paper in their offices rather than in public before the planning and zoning boards. In March, the state Attorney General's Office found the town failed to respond to Angelo's request within the statutorily imposed time frame, failed to provide a detailed response, and failed to inform Angelo of his appeal rights and therefore violated the Access to Public Records Act, The attorney general's letter stated finally that: "... we conclude that  the town's violations of the APRA ... were knowing and willful, or reckless,". Conley cited a town ordinance that indemnifies town officials "from all loss, cost, damage and expense, including legal fees and court costs," arising out of claims and settlements related to alleged acts committed within the scope of the official's duties. The same ordinance states that employees and officials will not be indemnified if the conduct in question resulted from "wilful, wanton or malicious conduct." Angelo, in comments he made to the Town Council during its meeting on Monday, said town officials should pay the fine. "It is my contention that the Westerly taxpayers should not be made liable for the cost of civil fines because of the APRA violation. Rather, the civil fines should be paid by the town officials responsible for violating the APRA," Angelo said. For more about the latest stories in and around Westerly, head over to westerlysun.com. There are a lot of businesses in our community that are hiring right now, so we're excited to tell you about some new job listings. Today's Job posting comes from Sea Bags in Watch Hill. They're looking for a part-time retail sales associate ideally with 2 years of retail experience and customer service. Pay depends on experience.. If you'd like to learn more or apply, you can do so at the link in our episode description: https://www.indeed.com/l-Westerly,-RI-jobs.html?vjk=2742aded61e027db&advn=8743562717035863 Today we're remembering the life of Theresa Pharris of Alton and currently of Watch Hill. She was born in Alton and was a lifelong communicant of both Our Lady of Victory and St. Vincent de Paul Parishes. Theresa worked at Raytheon Co. in Boston, Mass. and then for many decades as a receptionist at Cottrell & Sons which later became Harris Graphics. During the Vietnam War she held leadership roles with American Legion Auxiliary / Downey Weaver Post #34. After retiring she spent her time with family and friends, traveling and enjoying numerous hobbies like making hooked rugs. In particular she enjoyed traveling with her long term partner Stanley Civco to visit historic sites like Mount Rushmore and Washington, D.C. While Theresa never had children of her own, she was loved and adored by hundreds of nieces, nephews and extended family members across the country. She took great pride in her family and was an active participant in their lives, always curious to hear of recent travel adventures, join family celebrations and support her family in any way she could. Theresa was someone who lit up every room and social gathering she attended. She was an animated storyteller that could entice laughter from even the most serious acquaintances. Her spirit was generous and her laugh contagious. She lived life to the fullest, enjoying summer lobster bakes and loved good conversation over a cup of coffee. Theresa was quick witted, kind hearted and a respected friend to many. Theresa will be dearly missed by all who had the pleasure to have met her. Thank you for taking a moment today to remember and celebrate Theresa's life. That's it for today, we'll be back next time with more! Also, remember to check out our sponsor Perennial, Daily Gut & Brain, available at the CVS on Main St. in Wakefield! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office mishandled a series of public records requests after discovering that about 10 months of Durkan’s text messages were missing, a whistleblower investigation has determined.The mayor’s legal counsel, Michelle Chen, engaged in improper governmental action when she decided to exclude Durkan’s missing texts from certain requests, violating the state Public Records Act, according to a report on the investigation conducted by an outside expert on behalf of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.Additionally, Chen diverged from best practices when she decided the mayor’s office wouldn’t inform requesters that Durkan’s texts from Aug. 28, 2019 to June 25, 2020 had not been retained, according to the report published Thursday.Join your host Sean Reynolds, owner of Summit Properties NW and Reynolds & Kline Appraisal as he takes a look at this developing topic.Support the show (https://buymeacoff.ee/seattlepodcast)

At the start of 2021, the criminal trial brief for the homicide of “Fat Joe” Versace has been released to the public decades after being closed under Section 9 of Victoria's Public Records Act. - A inizio 2021 sono state rese accessibili al pubblico le minute del processo per l'omicidio di "Fat Joe" Versace, rimaste protette per 75 anni sotto la Section 9 del Public Records Act del Victoria.

David Dunn Interview. Why was the Public Records Act lawsuit against COBI he filed recently withdrawn? What was the true origin of the lawsuit? How does he feel about being accused in the Kitsap Sun by a Bainbridge Island Councilmember of having "targeted" her because of her race? Straight talk about the Public Records request which led to "Olivegate." Watch Wake Up Bainbridge Exclusive Podcasts and Footage: The Wake Up Bainbridge Show http://www.wakeupbainbridge.comhttps://twitter.com/wakeup98110/https://www.instagram.com/wakeupbainb...http://facebook.com/wakeupbainbridge/ Brought to you by Bainbridge Online Broadcasting

Freedom Foundation's California litigator Mariah Gondeiro Watt and Outreach Director Sam Coleman discuss recent lawsuit's filed by the Freedom Foundation against CalHR and San Bernardino County under the California Public Records Act. Learn more at https://www.freedomfoundation.com/ Donate at https://www.freedomfoundation.com/donate/ To opt-out of your union visit https://www.optouttoday.com/ "Public employees are finally free to make their own decisions about union membership."

Episode 263: Live with Kirsten Hytopoulos, Newly Elected City of Bainbridge Island Council Member. Once the Mayor of COBI is back as the at-large COBI Council Member for the new Council to begin her term in January. Her priorities, her hopes for her fellow Council Members and the big challenges from Suzuki, Public Records Act lawsuits, the last year of the City Manager's contract are all addressed. Council Member Hytopoulos didn't duck the tough questions and we think she provides a good overview of Island 2020 at City Hall.Episode 263 is brought to you by Outcome Athletics (soon to be in their new home at The Pavilion) and the best personal trainer on Bainbridge Island, Bethanee Randles.

Host Devon Lincoln talks with Lozano Smith partners Mary Lerner and Anne Collins, co-chairs of the firm’s Governance Practice Group, about the basics that every newly elected member of a local agency governing body should know when assuming office.  This podcast isn’t just for newly electeds – it’s full of information for public officials, local agency staff, and members of the voting public too. Show Notes & References 8:55  The Brown Act 16:11  The Public Records Act 17:12  City of San Jose v. Superior Court (2017) 2 Cal.5th 608 19:26  The Political Reform Act (Government Code section 87100 et seq.) 20:16  Statement of Economic Interests (Form 700) 20:49  Podcast: Episode 16: It's Time to Fill Out Your Form 700! 21:30  Government Code section 1090 24:53  Video: Staying Under the Umbrella: Board Members’ Obligations and Immunities  30:50  Ethics training (AB 1234) 30:53  Sexual Harassment training 31:15  Lozano Smith Client Services (ClientServices@lozanosmith.com)   For more information on the topics discussed in this podcast, please visit our website at: www.lozanosmith.com/podcast.

Update on City Employee Being Investigated. Calling balls and strikes in the Public Records Act lawsuits against the City of Bainbridge Island.Episode 243 is brought to you by Outcome Athletics, the home of the best personal trainer on Bainbridge, Bethanee Randles.

Episode 229 - The Weekend Wrap Up. Mostly Stuff We Can't Talk About Yet. The final days of the November 5th election: winners, losers and how do I get to the ballot box? Richard & Sal DeRosalia pick the winners of all the major Bainbridge Island elections, seal them in an envelope and await 8:00pm Tuesday November 5, 2019. Helpful information from the Kitsap County Auditor, Plaintiff's attorney for the Public Records Act lawsuits against the City of Bainbridge Island drops an electronic bombshell: the deposition of Councilmember Rasham Nassar in the Dunn/Wilkinson suit. And of course, thank you for not raining right now, Pacific Northwest! Episode 229 is brought to you by Storyville Coffee Company where we start our day, every day. And Outcome Athletics home of the best personal trainer on Bainbridge, Bethanee Randles.

Episode 221 The Monday Morning Weekend Wrap-Up Show. Are you tired of the election? Cold enough for you? We talked about our interview with attorney Nicholas Power and the two lawsuits he represents against the City of Bainbridge Island, Washington regarding the Public Records Act (if you missed it you can watch it here:https://www.facebook.com/wakeupbainbridge/videos/397351341164819/) We reviewed how candidates are using the large Facebook Group Bainbridge Islanders to promote their campaigns. Who has the best campaign signs? Kirsten for Council gets the nod for best sign and Grayson Wildsmith for City Council gets the best blue and red sign. We are intrigued by the https://www.indtheatre.org/ given high quality productions for free at Rolling Bay Hall with a new production of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead opening later in the week. We invited them to come on the show and demonstrate their swordplay! I'll be in touch Meredyth Yund. Episode 221 is brought to you by the great folks at Outcome Athletics and Storyville Coffee Company, together, they make Bainbridge better!

Episode 212 - Nicholas Power the attorney for two recently filed Public Records Act lawsuits against City of Bainbridge Island, Washington joins Wake Up Bainbridge on a special Sunday Night edition of the show on a dark and stormy night.Brought to you by Storyville Coffee Company (Thank you Katie!) and Outcome Athletics home of the best personal trainer on Bainbridge, Bethanee Randles.

Episode 211 -- On the Road with Sal DeRosalia, Bethanee Randles and Vito. Bainbridge to Fresno update. The ballots have landed! Nick Power the attorney on two Public Records Act lawsuits facing the City of Bainbridge Island, Washington will be our guest tomorrow October 20, 2019 in the Wake Up Bainbridge studio at 7:00pm.Episode 211 is brought to you by Storyville Coffee Company at the Roastery in the Coppertop and Pike Place. And Outcome Athletics home of the best personal trainer on Bainbridge Island, Bethanee Randles.

Late last year just weeks before he retired, former San Diego County Assistant District Attorney Jesse Rodriguez ordered a secret investigation — using district attorney staff — into the ex-boyfriend of his daughter, who was locked in a contentious custody dispute over their infant son. The inquiry began in early November and appears to have lasted until the week before Christmas, according to internal documents obtained from the District Attorney's Office under the state Public Records Act that outline the probe. The records show that Chief Deputy Dominic Dugo directed the investigation using a senior investigator, Tony Giralamo. The probe focused on finding evidence through the state Employment Development Department for a charge of fraud or perjury related to an unemployment claim filed in early 2017 by the former boyfriend, 44-year-old Nathaniel Moore, who was referred to in one of the emails as “our target.” Story: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/courts/story/2019-06-25/former-no-2-in-da-office-conducted-secret-probe-into-daughters-ex-boyfriend-records-show

The Florida Public Records Act requires state and local government entities and agencies to make their records available to the public. But the Act also has many implications for private entities that transact business with Florida government agencies. How does the Act affect your business? Can you keep your confidential documents or trade secrets safe from public disclosure? Olivia Kelman and Lanette Suarez provide a primer on the Florida Public Records Act with a focus on issues faced by private entities interacting with Florida government agencies. Download Transcript Presenters: Olivia Kelman and Lanette Suarez

The Florida Public Records Act requires state and local government entities and agencies to make their records available to the public. But the Act also has many implications for private entities that transact business with Florida government agencies. How does the Act affect your business? Can you keep your confidential documents or trade secrets safe from public disclosure? Olivia Kelman and Lanette Suarez provide a primer on the Florida Public Records Act with a focus on issues faced by private entities interacting with Florida government agencies. Download Transcript Presenters: Olivia Kelman and Lanette Suarez

Scott Lewis, Andy Keatts and Sara Libby tore in to this week. SB 615, by Sen. Ben Hueso and City Attorney Mara Elliott, and would make it harder for the public to hold government officials accountable for violating the Public Records Act. What ensues on this podcast is a high-decibel discussion by our hosts. We also called local reporter Mari Payton to talk about a big story she broke this week about the U.S. government tracking journalists and immigration advocates. We want to learn more about you! If you could fill out this brief two-minute survey that would help us a lot. It's at vosd.org/podsurvey Follow Scott and Andy’s weekly political coverage with the Politics Report. Sara’s weekly newsletter is What We Learned This Week. Talk to us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

I have watched John Tamihere from a distance, but became especially interested in his research on Auckland Council, when I read an article of his in the Herald on November 9th. In the article John mentions Penny Bright’s ‘relentless requests’ for council to open its books. As Alan Preston and I have a petition now in parliament asking, in Penny’s words, “that the House of Representatives undertake an urgent inquiry into whether Auckland Council has failed to comply with the statutory requirements of section 17(1) of the Public Records Act 2005”, I contacted John to see if he would meet me. Since meeting John, I have discovered a petition by Susan Wann that requests “that the House of Representatives conduct an independent inquiry into Auckland Council's performance, including financial accountability, and then pass legislation reforming Auckland's local government.” So people are beginning to wake up to Auckland Council’s lack of financial performance and transparency, particularly around CCOs (Council Controlled Organisations) or Costly Creations as John has referred to them as. Private procurement, or “contracting out” of public services, (formerly provided in-house under the public service model), is now often done under contract management. If there is no cost-benefit analysis which proves that privatisation is more cost-effective for ratepayers, then questions must be asked. Both Susan Wann’s and my petition have been sent to the Governance and Administration Committee in parliament. NZ law is very clear on the requirement for transparency in public spending: Section 17(1) of the Public Records Act 2005 says: “Requirement to create and maintain records (1) Every public office and local authority must create and maintain full and accurate records of its affairs, in accordance with normal, prudent business practice, including the records of any matter that is contracted out to an independent contractor.” John has discovered that $1.049 billion needs disclosure on via just 6 CCOs in the last annual reports. See his Herald article below where he also exposes the massive salaries of the CEOs of those 6 organisations. John says there is a need for whistleblowers. John is very clear that people are waking to the fact that the Emperor has no clothes! However he feels that we need to reset our culture. He says, “Kiwis are not stupid, they are waking up”. He talks about the government’s next budget that is being called the Wellbeings Budget, where success will be measured by wellbeing. He is hopeful it will bring change. He says supply-side economics has failed us and we need to acknowledge that. Supply-side economics is a macroeconomic theory arguing that economic growth can be most effectively created by lowering taxes and decreasing regulation and is often referred to as Rogernomics in New Zealand. After 30 years of it we have our profits going offshore and the gap between rich and poor has increased exponentially. I asked John to imagine he was mayor, and what was the first thing he would do to rectify some of the issues we had raised. He replied, Clean the house”! He would like to keep democracy safe and one way to do that would be to appoint an integrity unit which in effect would be an ombudsman. Corruption must be addressed. He spoke about recycling and homelessness, cycleways and a variety of issues. He talked warmly of compassion and integrity and how we must not lose our humanity. Also democracy must not be retired to Netflix! Only 36% voted in the last local body elections and while some people don’t bother, others move house and so may not receive their voting papers. John Tamihere Bio: JT as is he is affectionately known - is one of Māoridom’s greatest enigmas. Whether it has been battling in the political arena, where JT served two terms as a Government Minister or going toe-to-toe with iwi leadership over the rights of urban Māori, JT has never wavered from advocating for the rights and mana of his people. Brought up by a rugby league loving Māori father and staunchly Catholic Pākehā mother, JT’s parents were a huge influence and encouraging force in his life. Born 10th of 12 children, JT was the first to attend university, graduating with a double degree in arts and law. In 1988, he was the youngest Regional Manager, Department of Māori Affairs and the youngest District Solicitor for Waikato Maniapoto Land District. JT was appointed as CEO of West Auckland’s Waipareira Trust as Waitangi Treaty settlements with the Crown were being settled. But urban Māori were given no concessions or rights and JT, despite his own iwi affiliations, took the Wai414 Claim to the Waitangi Tribunal and later the Privy Council in London to address this injustice. The legal ruling of the Wai414 Claim recognised urban Māori under the Treaty. That win catapulted JT into politics and he easily won the Hauraki Electorate for Labour, also appointed Chair of the Māori Affairs Select Committee. There was consensus that JT would become our first Māori Prime Minister, after winning the Tāmaki Makaurau seat in 2002 and promoted to Cabinet, that view seemed on track. In 2005, JT left parliament, returning to Whānau Waipareira, where he has grown the organisation’s balance sheet by 90%, while establishing Waipareira as a local, national and internationally recognised whānau, who deploy services across an integrated framework. He has also led the establishment of North Island Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency Te Pou Matakana. JT remains lead negotiator Ngāti Porou ki Hauraki and Chair of Ngāti Porou ki Hauraki and a Māori appointment on the Māori TV Board. JT’s vision, leadership and genuine crossover appeal with Pākehā, has become a loss to politics but a major victory for urban Māori. -------------------------------------------------------------   Here is John Tamihere’s Herald article, “Shine a Light on these Costly Creations,” https://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=12156805&fbclid=IwAR2MvKVzEL6FR7qKJKmrRyUf7v1HjcAx8X71gOLS7Zz8ucX2qSfi4q-Z8Kk Lisa Er and Alan William Preston’s petition press release http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1809/S00290/is-auckland-council-complying-with-the-public-records-act.htm

This podcast addresses the tension between protecting personal information and the obligation to disclose public records.  Striking the wrong balance may burden either the local agency, or the individual employee, with significant costs.  Hear how best to contend with the money pitfalls of the CPRA. Show Notes & References 7:17  Pasadena Police Officers Assn. v. City of Pasadena (2018) 22 Cal.App.5th 147 (http://www.lozanosmith.com/news-clientnewsbriefdetail.php?news_id=2771) 8:13  "PAGA" is commonly referred to as the private attorney general statutes, CCP, § 1021.5 8:57  National Conference of Black Mayors v. Chico Community Publishing (2018) 25 Cal.App.5th 570 (http://www.lozanosmith.com/news-clientnewsbriefdetail.php?news_id=2771) 12:48  Prop 42 (2014) (http://www.lozanosmith.com/news-clientnewsbriefdetail.php?news_id=2263) 14:14  Sukumar v. City of San Diego (2017) 14 Cal.App.5th 451 (http://www.lozanosmith.com/news-clientnewsbriefdetail.php?news_id=2682) 15:30  Statutory adoption for municipalities posting to websites - SB 272 (2015) which added Gov. Code, § 6270.5 (http://www.lozanosmith.com/news-clientnewsbriefdetail.php?news_id=2451) 17:14  City of San Jose v. Superior Court (2017) 2 Cal.5th 608 (http://www.lozanosmith.com/news-clientnewsbriefdetail.php?news_id=2616) Lozano Smith has created a Public Records Act checklist for public agencies, which can be downloaded at our website. For more information on the California Public Records Act issues discussed in this podcast, please visit our website at www.lozanosmith.com/podcast.

IMLA's 5 things to know for June 1, 2018. Listen to this podcast to learn about the below! • 4 cent damage award in police shooting • Vacancies on council and Home Rule vs state law • Public Records Act – comity – sexual abuse • Is US currency a violation of Establishment Clause • Suing to recover fraudulent overtime

We interviewed Representative Beth Doglio on the recent legislative session. What happened at the state that will impact the people of Olympia? And what did Olympia bring to state politics? And, yes, we did ask her about the Public Records Act debacle. Download this episode  

State lawmakers passed a bill to exempt themselves from the state's Public Records Act. Host Ryan Takeo talks to investigative reporter Chris Ingalls who talks about why it matters - and a Democratic state Rep. who details why he voted for it, even though he disagreed with the process the bill was quickly passed.

In this interview anti-privatisation and anti-corruption whistle-blower, Penny Bright, talks on issues around the three Cs - Corruption, Contractocracy, and Corporate Welfare, as well as issues around the private procurement model for public services. Penny says the root cause of most corruption is privatisation. She asks why the Public Records Act is not being fully implemented and enforced in New Zealand. If New Zealand is truly 'the least corrupt country in the world' - shouldn't we arguably be the most transparent? She says public transport is not public, and asks what the implications are of a fuel tax. Penny has been involved in opposing the Tamaki 'Regeneration' project and speaks about dubious government and private dealings there. She talks on the murdered Maltese investigative journalist who exposed the Panama Papers and has found some disturbing New Zealand connections. Penny also speaks on State Capture, where private interests significantly influence the government’s decision-making processes to their own advantage.” INTERNATIONAL RULE OF LAW FORUM Penny Bright, was invited as a NZ 'Rule of Law' expert, together with nearly 300 attendees from 75 countries to the 2017 World Justice Project International Rule of Law Forum at The Hague. There she informed the delegates that New Zealand is a “Corrupt, polluted tax haven. She says, "My political 'bombshell' was about NZ's corruption REALITY, and in my opinion, New Zealand is a 'corrupt, polluted tax haven - a banana republic without the bananas'. I also stated that the Transparency International 'Corruption Perception Index' (which NZ topped 10 times, sometimes 1st equal) should be screwed up and thrown into the rubbish bin of history.” PRESS RELEASE THURSDAY JAN 26 2017 Penny Bright Independent candidate Mt Albert by-election says The 2016 Corruption Perception Index isn't worth the paper it's written on." She says, "This 'Corruption Perception Index' is not based upon measurable, objective yardsticks - but essentially the subjective opinions of anonymous business people." http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1701/S00171/the-2016-corruption-perception-index-isnt-worth-the-paper.htm “Here were objective, significant milestones or yardsticks for quantifying corruption REALITY, rather than relying largely upon the subjective opinions of anonymous businesspeople for PERCEPTION of corruption which in her view are a meaningless measure. I pointed out how in 2010 how I had attended the Transparency International Anti-Corruption Conference in Bangkok. Where we were told that the global procurement market was $14 TRILLION and the amount estimated to be lost in bribery and corruption was $2.5 TRILLION! I had a HUGE lightbulb moment! Wouldn't $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000, or $2.5 thousand billion) help to feed, clothe, water and shelter a few poor people? Then another 'lightbulb' moment - was that Transparency International were not looking at the underpinning private procurement MODEL, and only the private procurement PROCESS.” PRIVATE PROCUREMENT MODEL FOR PUBLIC SERVICES: As soon as you get into the private procurement (contracting out) of public services, formerly provided in house by staff directly employed under the public service model, you got into CONTRACT MANAGEMENT. Government or Council staff were regarded as not competent to do contract management - so a 'bureaucrats would then hire CONSULTANTS to 'project manage' the WORKS CONTRACTORS, who would then usually SUB-CONTRACT. So by the time you got down to those in the boots and overalls getting their hands dirty and actually doing something productive - you might have up to 4 layers of pinstripe suits clipping the ticket, while effectively doing nothing. How is that a more 'cost-effective' use of public money? Penny says, “In 2010, at the Transparency International Anti-Corruption Conference, I asked a (high-faluting) panel - where was the EVIDENCE that the private procurement of public services, that used to be provided at central and local government level, was more 'cost-effective' than former 'in-house' service provision? (It was like I had slapped the face of the person who was chairing the panel. He literally did a 'double-take' and mumbled that there was evidence - but none was ever provided.) My point to this 2017 World Justice Forum group - was that in my opinion, it was time to look at the whole underpinning private procurement MODEL for public services. ( IMO - it is the privatisation -private procurement - of public services which is the major source of GRAND corruption.” THE ROOT CAUSE OF CORRUPTION IS PRIVATISATION: Penny is one of the few people in the world actually saying that the root cause of most GRAND corruption- is PRIVATISATION. How is it decided who GETS the contracts? Remember - back in 2010 - the global amount estimated to be paid in bribery and corruption was $2.5 TRILLION! This is a BIG deal. The whole Neo-liberal myth and mantra - 'public is bad - private is good' upon which this massive privatisation of public services, locally, nationally and internationally was based - was NOT 'evidence based'. The BIG business globalists - just MADE IT UP! If there is no 'cost-benefit analysis' which proves the privatisation (contracting out of public services is more cost-effective' for the public majority of taxpayers and ratepayers - then it's 'CORPORATE welfare'. Penny asks the most pertinent questions. Shouldn't the public majority (the 99%) benefit from public monies - not a small minority of private corporates (the 1%)? While there is a punitive 'Social WARfare' /'War on the Poor' regime waged against the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, there is, a completely different attitude towards the rich' on 'corporate welfare'. Where exactly are billion$ of public monies being spent on private sector consultants and contractors? How can you check for 'cost-effectiveness' in the spending of public monies being spent on private sector consultant$ and contractors, if you don't know exactly where these costs fall? WHY IS THE PUBLIC RECORDS ACT NOT BEING FULLY IMPLEMENTED AND ENFORCED? NZ LAW is very clear on this requirement for transparency in public spending. The NZ Public Records Act 2005:. http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2005/0040/latest/DLM345729.html Requirement to create and maintain records (1)Every public office and local authority must create and maintain full and accurate records of its affairs, in accordance with normal, prudent business practice, including the records of any matter that is contracted out to an independent contractor. How can you have transparency or accountability without full and accurate records available for public scrutiny? The NZ Public Records Act 2005 has been the LAW for the last TWELVE years. Why is the Public Records Act not being fully implemented and enforced? Penny clearly states that the full implementation and enforcement of the NZ Public Records Act 2005, would transform transparency and accountability, and this should be an urgent priority for this new Labour-led Coalition Government. Penny’s call for transparency includes “OPEN THE BOOK$! CUT OUT THE CONTRACTOR$! BRING NZ LOCAL AND CENTRAL GOVERNMENT PUBLIC SERVICES BACK 'IN-HOUSE' UNDER THE GENUINE PUBLIC SERVICES MODEL! PURGE THE FORMER PRIVATE SECTOR BUSINESSPEOPLE FROM THE LOCAL AND CENTRAL GOVERNMENT 'BUREAUCRACY' AND BRING BACK GENUINE 'PUBLIC SERVANTS'. and STOP THE 'THREE 'C's! The CONTRACTOCRACY, CORRUPTION and CORPORATE welfare.” ------------------------------ FUEL TAX: In Auckland, what is being proposed is an Auckland Regional Fuel Tax, to help fund developments with 'public transport'. However - there is no such thing, as 'PUBLIC' transport in Auckland. The trains, buses and ferry services are PUBLICLY-subsidised, but privately owned, operated and managed, passenger transport operators. Auckland Transport won't reveal how many public millions are being paid to subsidise private passenger transport, on top of their private profits. Their 'books' are NOT open - regarding the millions of public monies paid to subsidise these private passenger transport operators. Penny calls to make Auckland Transport 'PUBLIC' again! Get rid of Auckland Transport as a CCO, and bring it back under direct Auckland Council control. And no Auckland Regional Fuel Tax! THE TAMAKI REGENERATION PROJECT: The Tamaki 'Regeneration' project - has proven to be a “HUGE GENTRIFICATION SCAM” pushing state tenants off prime real estate. Under the National Government the ownership of 2,867 properties from housing New Zealand were transferred into this Tamaki Regeneration Limited – a 100% crown owned crown entity company. This company then is on selling the land. Former Tamaki State tenants have been forced off prime real estate to make way for private mansions for the wealthy, and private profits for property developer. Penny speaks passionately about this, having spent months researching this issue and spending time on site with some of the tenants. Here is a video about this. Penny believes there should be an urgent parliamentary enquiry into the Tamaki “scam”. STATE CAPTURE A form of corrupt practice, which, in Penny’s opinion, is endemic in NZ, is 'State Capture'. 'State Capture' is where (corporate) vested interests get their way, at the POLICY level of government, in order to get laws passed that serve their interests. With whom are the 'policy analysts' consulting, before legislation goes through the Parliamentary 'sausage machine'? Penny says, “Check the Regulatory Impact Statements to find out.” PANAMA  PAPERS New Zealand in Penny’s opinion, is a corrupt, polluted tax haven. It was murdered Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who 'blew the whistle' and twice exposed links between Maltese 'Politically Exposed Persons' (PEPs) and NZ foreign trusts being used for money-laundering, information that had been revealed in the Panama Papers. On 1 August 2017, the (former) Chair of Transparency International, Jose Ugaz, at a meeting of over 200 people at Rutherford House, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand, stated that John Key should be investigated over the Panama Papers. 2 days after Daphne was blown to pieces in a car bomb attack (16 October 2017), it was announced that former NZ John Key Prime Minister would become Chair of the Board of ANZ. The ANZ bank is the Australian bank which had been mentioned more in the Panama Papers than any other Australian bank. Why no NZ mainstream media coverage of this story? Penny calls for an investigation of John Key over the Panama Papers! MALTA SCANDAL EXPOSES NZ TRUSTS AGAIN: It was murdered Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who exposed, via the Panama Papers, how NZ foreign trusts were used as money-laundering vehicles by Maltese Politically Exposed Persons. The saga began in February 2016 when Caruana-Galizia revealed that Schembri and Mizzi had set up two Panama companies, Tillgate Inc and Hearnville Inc, owned by the Haast Trust and Rotorua Trust in New Zealand. In April 2016, the Financial Review published new details of Schembri and Mizzi's New Zealand trusts and their attempts to open a bank account in Dubai. A Malta magistrate is investigating the explosive claims of money laundering and corruption that have put New Zealand in the middle of a global cash trail from the family of Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev. President Aliyev's daughter, Leyla Aliyeva, is alleged to have channelled more than NZ$1.6 million to senior figures of the Malta government, including Prime Minister Joseph Muscat's wife. These include alleged payments to Panama companies owned by New Zealand trusts set up by the Malta Energy Minister Karl Mizzi and Muscat's chief of staff, Keith Schembri. On April 20, Maltese blogger Daphne Caruana-Galizia reported that she held copies of documents originally stored in a kitchen at Pilatus Bank, which showed that Egrant Inc, a mystery Panama Papers company identified by the Financial Review last year, was secretly owned by the Maltese Prime Minister's wife, Michelle Muscat. In March 2016, a Dubai company controlled by Leyla Aliyeva had transferred US$1.017 million (NZ$1.47 million) marked as a loan into Egrant's account at Pilatus Bank, Caruana-Galizia reported. Joseph Muscat denied the claims, calling it the "biggest political lie in Malta's history". Caruana-Galizia reported that other payments were made from Leyla Aliyeva's company to Pilatus accounts held by Egrant as well as Tillgate Inc and Hearnville Inc, two Panama companies that are owned by Schembri and Mizzi, through New Zealand trusts. The latest revelations, if substantiated, are an embarrassment for the New Zealand government, which announced an inquiry into its offshore trust laws on April 11 last year, the day after the Financial Review revealed details of how Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca's Malta agent, BT Nexia, began setting up Tillson, Hearnville and Egrant five days after Muscat's election victory in 2013. Mossack Fonseca's files were obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. New Zealand subsequently amended its offshore trusts regime, requiring foreign trusts to file annual accounts with the New Zealand tax office, but with no further restrictions. At that time, it appeared the Malta trusts had never been used, after Mizzi and Schembri's Panama companies were turned down by eight banks who refused to open accounts for them because they were Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs). The Panama Papers, however, show repeated cases of overseas investors filing false or implausible sets of accounts with New Zealand lawyers, who have limited means to verify the figures. NEW ZEALAND’S SIGNIFICANT ROLE: The latest wave of allegations in Malta underline how easily the New Zealand disclosure laws can be avoided, which the new laws do not change. If the reports are substantiated, they raise a far more serious picture of money-laundering, from one of the most corrupt countries in the world, in which New Zealand's foreign trusts played a significant role. We need far more mainstream investigative journalism and reporting on this issue. Here is a video of a small protest that Penny held in solidarity for Daphne Caruana Galizia, in Auckland on 3 November 2017. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Penny Bright has been arrested 22 times after being (unlawfully) denied speaking rights at Auckland City Council, mainly on matters relating to water. Four District Court Judges have acknowledged the 'Public Watchdog' role - so that is why she describes herself as a judicially recognised Public Watchdog' on Metrowater, water and Auckland regional governance matters. Penny has also been described in the NZ Herald as an 'anti-corruption campaigner' in the fight for more transparency and accountability particularly at local government. Penny Bright helped to set up the 'Stop the Supercity' group - which is totally opposed to the attempted corporate takeover of the Auckland region to run it 'like a business, by business - for business'. She hasn’t paid her rates for 9 years, and won’t until Auckland Council tells us how our rate payers money is being spent. See her Greenplanet interview about this – here. Having been a mayoral candidate three times, she has a public profile that people are bound to have an opinion about. Always campaigning with an element of humour, Penny signs her e-mails with, ‘Her Warship’. This interview was sponsored by The Awareness Party http://www.theawarenessparty.com/home/

Rep. Joan McBride, Democrat from Kirkland, has worked with GOP Rep. Terry Nealey (Dayton) since last year on an effort to bring Washington's Public Records Act into the 21st century. In this bipartisan Capitol Ideas conversation, they talk about how they managed to craft bills that so far have the support of stakeholders on all sides of the issue.

“Open the books,” is Mayoral candidate Penny Bright’s catch phrase, She hasn’t paid her rates for 9 years, and won’t until Auckland Council tells us how our rate payers money is being spent. Auckland Mayoral Candidate and public watchdog Penny Bright talks with Lisa Er. 'Activists get things done'! “It's time to stop the commercialisation and privatisation of Council services and regulatory functions, and return to the genuine 'public service' model” says Penny. “It's time for we the people to take back control of our region, our assets and our resources!” This October, voting Penny Bright for Mayor will not be just a 'protest' vote - but a vote for real change that will serve the public and the public interest - not corporate interests. “I'm fiercely and genuinely politically independent and work on an 'issue by issue' basis. My proven track record is 20 years experience in local government, defending the public & the public interest, as a self-funded anti-privatisation & anti-corruption 'Public Watchdog'.” “I am opposed to corporate control, locally, nationally and internationally, and am the only Auckland Mayoral candidate who is actively opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA).” Penny also asserts that it is time to 'roll back Rogernomics' which was based on the myth and mantra 'public is bad - private is good'. (Rogernomics neo-liberal philosophy embraces five basic principles: 1 The rule of the market 2 Cutting public expenditure for social services 3 Deregulation 4 Privatisation 5 Eliminating the concept of public good or community.) “In my opinion, the only ones to have benefited from running public services in a more 'business-like' mode are those businesses which have been awarded the contracts. However, if Government and Council public services are now being owned, operated and managed for private profit without cost-benefit analysis - then that, in my view is 'corporate welfare', to which I am totally opposed.   Open the books - cut out the contractors - bring Council services & regulatory functions back 'in house' under the public service model, and stop corrupt cronyism and corporate welfare.” If elected Auckland Mayor Penny Bright will ensure the rule of law is implemented and enforced regarding ratepayers and citizens lawful rights to open, transparent and democratically accountable local government. “I'm also totally opposed to 'democracy for developers' and question why all this 'growth' has to come to Auckland? In my view, there should be a national population growth, migration and regional employment strategy.” Who benefits now from this 'One Plan' for Auckland, in my view, are property developers, foreign investors, bankers, land bankers, speculators and money-launderers. This is a 'Supercity' - for the 1%. The Auckland region is being run 'like a business - by business - for business, the mechanism for this effective corporate takeover being the 'Council Controlled Organisation' (CCO) model. It's time to stop the commercialisation and privatisation of Council services and regulatory functions, and return to the genuine 'public service' model. It's time for we the people to take back control of our region, our assets and our resources!” This time voting Penny Bright for Mayor will not be just a 'protest' vote - but a vote for real change that will serve the public and the public interest - not corporate interests. Penny’s Bio: AT 61, Penny sees her life as an onion, with many layers to her life. Her formative childhood years were in the Wairarapa. She was brought up on a 6 acre lifestyle block in Carterton, where she picked strawberries in Greytown as a 10 year old, to help buy a pony with the required riding gear. From this she learned to focus, and work hard to achieve what she wanted in life. She did well academically, but chose not to go University, having discovered political activism in her 7th form year through joining the anti-apartheid movement. After a year of hitch-hiking around New Zealand staying at Youth Hostels in the days when you could just walk into jobs off the street, she got on a plane to Sydney with $200 in the bank - to see the world. She didn't get past Australia! In Perth West Australia, in 1974, she got involved in the first famous campaign against foreign military bases in Australia, and was part of the 'Long March' across Australia against the USA base at North West Cape. She decided to return to New Zealand to become more politically involved, and ended up working for 6 years in a home appliance factory in Masterton and working as a Union activist on the factory floor. Penny was made redundant in 1981 and so went to Auckland to live. She was one of the 12 people who organised the anti- Springbok Tour protests in Auckland in 1981. This resulted in her being listed as one of 8 'subversives' on then Prime Minister Rob Muldoon's SIS list, although she has never been able to get a copy of her SIS file, and the GCSB would neither confirm or deny whether she was one of the 88 New Zealanders who had been unlawfully spied upon. After working for 4 years as an electronics assembler in a 'brown goods' factory, and being eventually sacked as a Union activist for being an arguably effective Union delegate, Penny did a welding course at (then) Auckland Institute of Technology (AIT). She was first employed as a welder and then ended up doing an adult apprenticeship in a stainless steel fabrication workshop qualifying in Advanced Trade in Sheet metal Engineering, where she became New Zealand's first female CBIP (Certification Board for Inspectorate Personnel) Welding Inspector. After doing some production planning, Penny became a Quality Assurance Co-ordinator, whose job it was to help ensure that pressure vessels didn't blow up, and  make sure that quality systems were in place so that the jobs that went out on the truck, were that which the sales people had promised, and the clients had ordered and paid for. After a change of company ownership when a number of people were made redundant Penny was subsequently hired as a Welding Tutor for 9 years at Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT), where she helped teach thousands of (mainly) men how to weld. So Penny had 16 years of working in a totally male-dominated environment. In 2000, she was made redundant from MIT, and having being fortunate enough to become mortgage-free that same year, Penny decided to work full-time on a self-funded basis on the political issues that she was involved with. These were mainly on the local government front, as a founding member of the Water Pressure Group against Auckland City Council's commercialised water services company Metrowater, and water privatisation. Penny has now been involved in local government issues in Auckland for the last 20 years. On the home front she has been together with ‘a lovely man’ who is hugely supportive of her, for over 10 years. Always campaigning with an element of humour, Penny signs her e-mails with, ‘Her Warship’. This interview was sponsored by The Awareness Party http://www.theawarenessparty.com/home/ PENNY BRIGHT’S ACTION PLAN TO ENSURE 'OPEN, TRANSPARENT AND DEMOCRATICALLY ACCOUNTABLE' NZ GOVERNMENT AND JUDICIARY: 1) Make ALL 'facilitation payments' (BRIBES) illegal. 2) Legislate to create a NZ independent anti-corruption body, tasked with educating the public and preventing corruption. 3) Legislate for NZ Members of Parliament (who make the rules for everyone else) to have a legally enforceable 'Code of Conduct'. 4) Make it an offence under the Local Government Act 2002, for NZ Local Government elected representatives to breach their 'Code of Conduct'. 5) Make it lawful, mandatory requirement for Local Government elected representatives to complete a 'Register of Interests' which is available for public scrutiny. 6) Make it a lawful, mandatory requirement for Local Government staff, responsible for property or procurement, to complete a 'Register of Interests' which is available for public scrutiny. 7) Make it lawful, a mandatory requirement for Local Government Council Controlled Organisation (CCO) Directors and staff, responsible for property or procurement, to complete a 'Register of Interests' which is available for public scrutiny. 8) Fully implement and enforce the Public Records Act 2005, to ensure public records are available for public scrutiny. 9) Make it a lawful requirement that a 'cost-benefit' analysis of NZ Central Government and Local Government public finances must be undertaken, to prove that private procurement of public services previously provided 'in house' is cost-effective for the public majority of tax payers and rate payers. 10) Legislate for a legally enforceable 'Code of Conduct' for members of the NZ Judiciary, to ensure that they are not 'above the law'. 11) Legislate to provide a publicly-available NZ Judicial 'Register of Interests', to help prevent 'conflicts of interest'. 12) Ensure ALL  NZ Court proceedings are  recorded, with audio records available to parties who request them. 13) Legislate for a publicly-available NZ 'Register of Lobbyists, and  'Code of Conduct' for lobbyists. 14) Legislate for a 'post-separation employment' ('revolving door' ) quarantine period from the time officials leave the public service, to take up a similar role in the private sector.   15) Legislate to make it a lawful requirement that it is only a binding vote of the public majority that can determine whether public assets held at NZ central or local government are sold, or long-term leased via Public Private Partnerships. 16) Legislate to make it unlawful for politicians to knowingly misrepresent their policies prior to central or local government elections. 17) Legislate to protect individuals, NGOs and community-based organisations, who are 'whistle-blowing' against 'conflicts of interest' and and alleged corrupt practices at central and local government level and within the judiciary. 18) Legislate to prevent 'State Capture' - where vested interests get what they want, at the 'policy' level, before laws are passed which serve their vested interests. Policy of 2016 Auckland Mayoral candidate Penny Bright. www.pennybright4mayor.org.nz                              Authorised by Penny Bright 86A School Rd Kingsland Auckland               Want to help?  e-mail - waterpressure@gmail.com