Records demands called ‘burdensome’

The case raises the typical questions that come up when large requests are made, and when governments feel that a person is being punitive or threatening rather than working to be a public watchdog.

Hungerschafer is a former Whatcom County Internet technology specialist convicted in 2005 of intercepting a county employee’s voice mails. He has made about 10 requests to the city since November, and has amended each about three times.

The 50-year-old initially requested e-mail communications between his girlfriend and anyone in the city’s Public Works Engineering Division, trying to pinpoint how many personal communications an employee had made.

In an interview and through emails, Hungerschafer painted a picture of an unresponsive government agency that has denied access to what he believes is a person abusing taxpayer-funded resources for their own benefit. But the issue is also very personal for him.

“If one of your family members told you that a project engineer in the city of Bellingham, Public Works, Engineering Section had been secretly maintaining long-term involvements with your family and loved ones and had given instructions that you were not to be informed, wouldn’t you be a bit curious?” he wrote in an e-mail.

Initially, the city found “several” communications from one employee to Hungerschafer’s girlfriend, but he was told that they were not “public records” as defined by the state law. The law has an exception for communications that have nothing to do with the workings of government.

Because of that, they would not provide him with the subject line or who sent them. That didn’t sit well with Hungerschafer, who filed a barrage of requests expanding the first request, amending the requests to add new information and casting a wider net.

CITY RESPONSE

Adelle Ringus of the city’s Judicial & Support Services spends 80 percent of her time answering and fulfilling publicrecords requests.

For Ringus, Hungerschafer’s requests are confusing and timeconsuming. She said she’s trying her best to respond as appropriately as possible.

“We don’t question his right, or your right or any requestor’s right to access public records,” she said, “because that’s a fundamental right that’s spelled out in Washington state law.”

But Ringus said the request is “very difficult because it goes so many different places” and requires extensive searches. At one point Ringus thought a search for some of the records would take years to complete. Eventually she found a solution that worked out easier: e-mailing every single city employee and asking them for help in compiling the records.

HURTING THE SYSTEM?

The case is “fascinating,” said Toby Nixon, president of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, because the spirit of the records law requires the city to comply even if the request is burdensome.

Nixon gave the city kudos for trying to fulfill the request.

Is Hungerschafer hurting the system by merely harassing the government, or is he performing a true watchdog function to look out for taxpayer dollars? Nixon asked. The problem for a public agency, he said, is that they can’t ask what the request is about; nor should they be able to.

“The main problem I have is the slippery slope,” Nixon said. “Once you start giving the government discretion about the records requests they’ll respond to, and you start to let the government question motives in determining whether or not they’ll respond to a request, you open the door to them being able to deny requests.”

Nixon said he didn’t believe that Hungerschafer was necessarily hurting the right of citizens to request records — he has advised others to make similar “fishing” requests in the past — but that government officials might start getting ideas about how to stop such requests.

One idea he’s heard from officials around the state is that an independent panel of average citizens should be able to review cases in extraordinary circumstances. The problem, Nixon said, is he doesn’t think the panel could ever truly be independent, and the reality is that governments just want discretion to stop requests that they might think are politically or personally embarrassing.

Several other public records cases have caused consternation for officials around the state, Nixon said. One example is Richard Pope, who constantly makes requests in King County to find potentially embarrassing information about his political opponents.

Another is Allan Parmelee, a convicted arsonist sitting in jail and filing requests for thousands of records on information about judges and prosecutors involved in his case. Parmelee had firebombed the cars of two lawyers, and in one communication to another lawyer threatened a “similar response.”

While Hungerschafer is making no threats, Nixon said it’s the “burdensome” or unusual cases that inspire officials to try to clamp down on requests they don’t want to fulfill.

While Bellingham officials work on Hungerschafer’s requests, Nixon said that even burdensome ones are often valuable and have purpose. After all, he said, the law says so.

“Ultimately this has to be viewed as a cost of doing business,” Nixon said. “It’s a fundamental right of the people to know what their government is doing. The people are sovereign.”

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