HomeMy WebLinkAbout072122 PUBLIC COMMENT_ OPMA Guidelines discussion________________________________
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Commissioners,
During the “workshop” discussion about the draft OPMA Guidelines on July 18, the following was said:
04:20:15
"So this is Caroline here. I was going to say there are a lot of emails that come to the JeffBoCC email. They're not necessarily comments for correspondence. And so it does take at least
an hour office staff member to determine which ones are correspondence and which are not. And those are carefully selected and put with the log that we're now putting online on Laserfiche."
The practice of having staff "filter" email correspondence will place the BoCC in jeopardy of violating the OPMA because it’s often difficult to tell what is "Public Comment", what is
"Testimony", and what falls into some other category.
The only safe way to deal with this is to have all correspondence handled the same way. Every email and piece of written correspondence received prior to the stated cutoff must be presented
to each of the Commissioners (or other governing body) in advance of the meeting in order to fully comply with the OPMA at RCW 42.30.230(2).
(All correspondence received in writing would be scanned and then treated the same as electronic correspondence.)
To minimize the risk of litigation, I recommend that the Guidelines:
* explain the above;
* state that no “filtering” of inbound correspondence is to be done by staff;
* state that all correspondence is to be made available online to the public prior to the start of the meeting to which the correspondence applies.
Thank you,
Tom Thiersch
Member, Washington Coalition for Open Government <https://washingtoncog.org/>
==== [RCW 42.30.010 Open Public Meetings Act <https://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=42.30&full=true> ] ==== ==== [RCW 42.56.030 Public Records Act <https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?ci
te=42.56&full=true> ] ====
"The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what
is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed and informing the people's public servants of their views so that they
may maintain control over the instruments that they have created."
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