News-Record.com

It's no secret that state law makes most state and local government records available to the public at minimal cost. The laws of our state designate official custodians for these records and spell out very clearly the obligation these folks have to keep their records where anyone off the street can walk in with no notice and see them, essentially.

And yet hardly a week goes by that someone on our staff doesn't run into the bureaucrat who doesn't know what "public" means. And the situation, remarkably, is no better now than it was when I got into this game in 1984. It's the bane of anyone who tries to practice accountability journalism for a living.

I'm not saying this to whine about my job. Quite the contrary. We take our role as surrogates for the public quite seriously, and we figure that if it's this bad for us, it must be ten times worse for you. If reporters for the News & Record, which keeps a huge, high-dollar, white-shoe law firm available for dealing with this kind of obstructionism and has demonstrated a willingness -- nay, even an eagerness -- to sue for public records, routinely run into this kind of trouble, then just how often, and how badly, must John or Jane Q. Citizen get jerked around?

If bureaucrats put half the energy into doing their jobs properly that they put into making up excuses for why they won't do their jobs properly, half the jokes about government would have no basis in fact.

For example, a colleague of mine recently requested from a local hospital -- and you know who you are -- the results of an autopsy that had been performed there. Now, there might have been any number of legitimate reasons why the hospital couldn't or wouldn't provide that report -- perhaps it had been forwarded to the office of the state's chief medical examiner, as all such reports are; perhaps the pathologist hadn't left a copy with the hospital. But you know what the reason excuse was that the hospital actually offered?

HIPPA.

That's right. The hospital was claiming that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Title II of which addresses privacy of medical records, wouldn't let them release the autopsy report.

There's just one minor problem with that argument.

THE. DEAD. HAVE. NO. RIGHT. OF. PRIVACY.

Just ask Princess Diana. Oh, wait -- you can't. 'Cuz she's DEAD. But you get my point.

Annoying and outlandish as this argument was, it was by no means the most absurd I'd ever heard of.

That one came my way this morning, via an Investigative Reporters & Editors e-mail list to which I subscribe. In it, a journalist described requesting data pertaining to leash-law enforcement from a county animal-control agency in Florida -- whose open-records law is a national model -- and being told that that data would have to be redacted (at great expense to the journalist) because of HIPPA.

HIPPA covers leash laws. And I am the national men's college basketball player of the year.

I bring all this up not only because of today's e-mail and the incident last week (as I said, we get something similar every week), but also because there's a big ol' campaign going on this month to educate folks on the importance of keeping government records public. (I don't remember who's behind it because, as I say, we run into issues like this every week.) (UPDATE: It's called Sunshine Week, and information is here.) A constitutional republic can't function without an informed populace, so you should feel free to doubt, and publicly cast aspersions on, the patriotism, competence and good will of anyone who tries to cite a reason not already clearly laid out in law why a particular government record shouldn't be public.

There's a fairness issue, too. Stripped of all its social, political and legal niceties, our relationship to government is almost like that of a hostage. We have to pay taxes, and if we don't pay the government can jail us, and if we try to evade jail the government can shoot us. The only way to restore any kind of moral balance to that equation is to ensure that everything government does, in our name and with our money, it does, to the greatest extent possible and consistent with national security, in the open.

So if you're ever dealing with a government agency and you can't get records you believe you're entitled to, let us know. And please feel free to share with us whatever lame excuses you get offered, as well. And here's hoping we don't get any more lame than trying to apply HIPPA to cocker spaniels.

UPDATE: Again, lest anyone think I'm whining, I understand quite well that there are worse problems to have.

UPDATE: The Seattle Times gets it:

Document after document, file after file, has been sealed — and sealed improperly — by the judges and court commissioners of King County Superior Court. A wrongful-death lawsuit against Virginia Mason Medical Center? Sealed. A lawsuit accusing a King County judge of legal malpractice? Sealed. A lawsuit blaming the state's social-services agency for the rape of a 13-year-old girl? Sealed.

Since 1990, at least 420 civil suits have been sealed in their entirety, The Seattle Times found. ...

The Washington Constitution says: "Justice in all cases shall be administered openly." To this, many King County judges have effectively added: "unless the parties don't want it to be."

The judges have displayed an ignorance of, or indifference to, the legal requirements for sealing court records. They have routinely sealed files while 1) offering little or no explanation, 2) applying the wrong legal standard, and 3) failing to acknowledge, much less weigh, the public interest in open court proceedings.

At least 97 percent of their sealing orders disregard rules set down by the Washington Supreme Court in the 1980s. ...

The 420 cases that we found represent but a sliver of all the sealed records in our courthouses. That number applies only to civil suits in one court: King County Superior. We excluded other types of cases, such as divorce, adoption, paternity or child-custody matters. The 420 also accounts only for cases sealed in their entirety. Many others are sealed in part. We stopped counting those at 1,000. ...

In months to come, The Seattle Times plans to get files unsealed and questions answered. The [Washington Supreme Court's] leadership crafted a plan that would have opened files with minimal delay, but other judges rebelled, saying the newspaper should be required to file a formal motion in each case that was improperly sealed.

We're going to be filing lots of motions.

This was just the first strike with the 10-foot clue stick. Now, the Times is going to hit 'em with the chair. Time to get some beer and some cheese Dorts and settle in to watch the fun.