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Some view Arthur West as a litigious thorn in the side of state and local governments.

Others see him as one of the most influential and effective open government activists in our state's history.

it's a bit of a Rorschach test.

And the actual answer is that he's both a pain to those who promote secrecy and an activist who is effective, massive change and at least slowed down the decline of government transparency.

Arthur West is next on northwest.

Now.

(Music) Open government has been a big piece of the programing we've done here on northwest now, and that's for a very specific reason.

America only works because we've built a high trust society, and transparency is the key to that.

Back in 1972, Washington's voters passed one of the strongest open government laws in the US.

But the Public Records Act and the Open Public Meetings Act are under attack.

And they have been for a long time.

That's why one of my goals for doing an annual program over the past 14 years was to do something very public facing, to educate people about their rights and this state's values when it comes to open government.

Arthur West has been at the point of the spear on this issue for years, going to court, battling cities, counties, the state in small taxing districts with more than a dozen published court opinions that are now part of the body of citations dealing with open government related case law.

Arthur West, thanks so much for coming to northwest.

Now, as I hope you know, we do a program every year on open government and government transparency here on this program.

And this year, instead of just Sunshine Week, we're doing Sunshine Month, of which you're, a part of in one of the programs that we're doing.

Because I think it's so important, that the people of the state, understand who, in my humble opinion, the person is who has been one of the primary drivers of case law and, advocating for open government and not only the letter of the law, but also the spirit of the law when it comes to the OPM and the PRA here in the state of Washington.

So with that preamble out of the way, I want to start a little bit with your bio, bio.

Tell folks who you are.

You've lived all over the world.

Where did you grow up and and give me your backstory a little bit.

Well, I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, during the 60s and early 70s, and, you know, there were rather interesting times there.

I remember going to, seeing riots and tear gas and, my dad worked at the university, and so, some of his colleagues were, we were wondering if they were, injured during some of the bombings.

But yeah, I met, oh.

I got to hang out with some of the SDS people there.

After that, I moved around, quite a bit.

We.

Oh, we were in Japan for a little while.

We were in Bert's burg.

Santa Cruz I lived in for some time.

Escondido.

So I, we moved around a lot.

How did you find your way to Olympia?

I originally was.

Wanted to go to college here.

Okay.

So I attended evergreen for for a number of years.

This may be a bit of a reach, but I still want to ask the question.

Did you experience at all in living around the country and in living in other countries at all?

Inform your career path?

Well, I think it's important that people see how people live around the world, because if you're just in one place, you get like stuck in a certain, you know, world view and things are radically different.

Even Eastern Washington is radically different.

You know, some some people, you know, it's like in the Middle Ages, they haven't gone 50 miles from where they were born.

I think it's very important to, to, you know, see other cultures.

So as you aged and got into a career field, why what got you dialed in on and settled on open government, government transparency?

Why this area?

Well, originally I was interested in how the legal system functioned.

I did some environmental cases.

There's, you know, we could drive around Olympia and show the various developments that we killed.

When I was doing that with my with some of my friends there.

There's a big case rolling fields that we we did.

But then I realized that, the environmental laws weren't any good.

If you couldn't get the information.

And then, environmental law was very difficult.

I mean, you have files are feet thick, and, very difficult to win.

And they keep making it more difficult all the time.

So then I, you know, started filing records, requests for environmental cases.

And then I realized, well, the the disclosure of records is where it's at.

It's more important than the, than the rest of it.

And the environmental laws are actually disclosure laws at that very base.

So, that rest they rest on the disclosure.

Yeah.

Of the environmental laws, rest on those disclosure laws.

Well, and they are disclosure laws.

They require an environmental impact statement.

And that's a disclosure process.

So, I realize how important that was.

I also ran into to things, you know, concrete things in the world that could be resolved or figured out by filing records, requests.

There was, oh, evergreen had a, a police force that was based on the, Gary Edwards Posse comitatus at one point that I, I researched, and at that point, Gary Edwards was like the nemesis.

But lately, you know, I, you know, getting older, I realized Gary Edwards was one of the only county commissioners with any common sense, and posse comitatus being the idea that the county was the ultimate authority over civil society.

Yes.

And that they could he could deputize a police force.

Right.

And that's what evergreen was prior to 1992.

I sued them and the criminal justice Training Commission for the 440 hours of Basic Academy training, based on the records I had received and one of the first case I ever won in the interest of transparency and disclosure, all the lawsuits and we'll talk about some of that.

But, I mean, you have been just a tremendous volume of of of litigation.

Most of which I would say, or at least a lot of which has been focused, again, on transparency and open government.

A lot of awards and money has come along with that.

So I want you to be able to address your, your critics.

And I'm sure you've heard this criticism.

He's just a troublemaker.

He's a profiteer.

He's a gadfly.

He's out to do this for profit.

When people hit you with that, what do you say?

Well, we live in a class based society.

People try to deny that.

And most of that is.

Isn't that people make money.

It's that I, not being a lawyer, make money.

In virtually no case I've ever been in did I have.

I made more than the lawyers fighting me.

And when I started out, the lawyers would make more in the morning.

In one appearance that I would make all month long.

And yes, there is, we are, you know, human beings are incentive based.

If you want people to do things, you there needs to be an incentive.

The Public Records Act has that.

But, I mean, these cases sometimes take 5 or 7 years.

I mean, it's hard.

You run into a lot of opposition writing an appeal.

You know, it's.

Yes.

And I couldn't find any attorney.

I mean, it's not, a windfall.

I could not find attorneys to represent me in these cases because the prospect of winning is not there is not there.

And you have to fight so hard and so long that lawyers will not take these cases on contingency, which means you have to you know, and I don't get paid unless I win the people I fight against, they get paid $500 an hour.

Win, lose or draw.

Two things can be true at the same time, right?

You can make a few bucks and also do some good.

I mean, you could do well by doing good right?

I don't see those as mutually exclusive.

And yes, you know, you and I tell people, you know, you can play the Blue Avenger and fly through the sky, you know, writing wrongs, but eventually you got to get a paycheck.

You got to go to Costco.

Yeah.

And, and yes, on occasion, I made some some very good money off of it.

But none of those cases were easy.

None of those cases were immediate.

Often, I had to go on appeal, and it took several years.

I mean, but here's another point I'd make, too, is that when people complain, they say, oh, that darn Arthur West making all that trouble.

And finally these lawsuits and, and and hitting this for public disclosure and public records.

There's an easy solution for this.

No.

Yes.

They could just give out the records.

I wouldn't I would not have a job if they didn't hide stuff.

And there's a lot of of, you know, progress has been made due to the records requests.

And every time the, discovery of dioxin in the inlet came from a records request to the port of Olympia from myself and one of my friends and, seven years of litigation, the, caucus, one of the earliest cases I was involved in was the caucus campaign scandal of the early 90s.

And that's when, Oh, Randy Tate and the Republicans were using the caucuses to run an an, tax initiative.

I think it was A602.

And that was before they outsourced all of that to Tim Iseman.

But I believe he was involved in I.

602 there was a whistleblower, who made a complaint.

The PDC did an investigation.

Tom Mortenson, I think it was, one of the Republican staff members got an injunction prohibiting disclosure of the BBC investigation, and we had to go up.

I think it ended up in the Supreme Court.

But the the, depositions of all of the various, involved legislators finally came out and were transcribed by, and and the caucus, you know, campaigning, ended after that.

So that was, a major change.

Yes.

That was a that was a big case.

Yeah.

And and then, Oh.

And that about, what is it?

In 94, I got involved with the DuPont Intel warehouse or project, and that was a project where, in DuPont, where Intel wanted to build a chip manufacturing plant, and they were advancing that through a very stealthy, process of just.

They said they're building a building for research and development and to to, and I didn't even know until years later when someone told me, but, and that one, well, I filed, an environmental suit and then joined with the, farmer Ken Braggart, who was, who owned the Delta before he gave it away.

The big picture here is that these deals are being cut in the back room.

Yes.

And you don't know what's happening until a final action comes on.

On an agenda?

Yeah.

And it's like, what are you.

What are you talking about?

That is a in principle, a lot of that is what you have been fighting against.

Yeah.

I mean, I people try to say that I, you know, take easy cases.

But if you look, I go against some of the hardest, you know, most to fight defendants, the people who are actually trying to hide, records that mean something, the, big government, big cities.

Yes.

Big corporations.

Yes.

I don't I'm not, you know, going after small school districts for technical violations.

Right, right.

I've always wondered this tune sent me straight on this.

Do you do you follow news reports and get an idea about where IRA violations may be taking place, and then follow up and test tester request?

Or do you just send out ten?

Figure five you're going to come back unfulfilled and incorrect.

It's such a target rich environment.

You can do it that way.

How do you go about making these selections and finding your targets?

Well, actually, it's gotten a lo Agencies take the Public Records Act a lot more seriously, like I was I was flying to you West part long before it was popular or fashionable to do so.

And yes, it's developed a lot.

It's taken more seriously now.

You can sometimes win in the trial court.

Occasionally.

But, people tell me a lot of times people will contact me and then tell me what's going on in their little area.

Sometimes I'll read things on the news, sometimes, I'll send out if there's a certain thing that that looks suspicious, I'll send out, you know, a few dozen requests or half a dozen to different cities or people involved in things in the, do you do it with another name or through another person?

Because if somebody sees a request down from Mars or West, they're dang near, I believe you, me, they're going to fulfill it.

Well, you might be surprised.

A lot of times, you know, the thing is, if you're not doing anything wrong, there's no reason to hide anything.

And a lot of what, Happens is they're doing something wrong.

They get something high, and.

But that's a very small minority of, agencies.

You know, no one hears about the agencies that have conscientious records, officers who fulfill requests on time.

And I is nine out of ten requests.

You just answer my question.

Do you think, non-responsive, non-law following people in public records, offices in cities, county, state, all around are the exception or the rule?

It's the exception now.

I mean, we've had mandatory training.

There's a training, agency.

There's, the attorney general's ombudsman provides training and guidance.

And so it's gotten a lot better.

I mean, 30 years ago, they were violating it right, left and center, and it was almost impossible to get enforcement.

You talked about the training.

A lot of that runs through the state associations of cities and counties, and they have a record of, resisting to some degree, public records request.

Ultimately, in your view, of the associations of cities and counties in the state help or hinder transparency?

Well, it's changed some, when I first, I don't know, over 20 years ago, when I first started going to the legislature and lobbying with Roland Thompson, we we were often referred to as the usual suspect to testify.

And every Public Records Act bill.

Right.

I mean, you know, decades, the so I noticed the Association of Cities, the Association of Counties and the Port District Association were behind a lot of the bills trying to cut the Public Records Act.

And I think I referred to them back 20 years ago, as the, unholy trinity and the minions of darkness.

And then tell us how you really feel.

Right?

That's, and then I had a period in 2010 when I sued those agencies to make them subject to the Public Records Act, which they strenuously resisted.

In fact, when my process server and I went to the Association of Cities, the, the chairman of it, said, you know, who is this Arthur?

Why, he's not interested.

Now, he's going to be we're a multi-million dollar corporation who can bowl over ordinary citizens like him.

And my, frankly, you're just encouraging him to.

So that was my experience with those people.

And it's gotten better.

But virtually every year, they they're behind a bill to got the Public Records Act.

And now they try to say that they really support it, but it's just these few people abusing it.

And, and, we just need to modernize it.

I think this year's bill was to provide a commission to modernize it.

Was it a wolf in sheep's clothing?

Was there all six chiefs?

Okay, they're all the same.

And we even made some terms about, oh, what was it?

Munchausen syndrome and poor grammar.

How was in Munch mania?

By proxy?

I think it would go from, you know, Rammer mania to, Munchausen syndrome.

Like Munchausen syndrome is you you, injure your child, so you get attention.

Yes.

And so the three cities and counties associations would, would, put forth city through they believed had been injured by the Public Records Act to get attention to it.

Got the act it stand them up is the reason.

Yes.

For this this modernization for these vexatious requests is like the Arthur West's of the world.

Yes.

It's you need to get on the right side of this.

Let's let's modernize the act.

Well, the act's pretty explicit.

Yes.

And you know, spotted in by a large majority of people and, it, you know, it works.

The thing is, the reason they don't like it is that they have to follow the act.

They have to disclose records, and if they don't, there are penalties.

Yep.

And that's something that they just can.

And occasionally an ordinary citizen, if they were very diligent, can get over on City Hall.

And that's something that these people just do not understand and don't like.

But a lot of it isn't that, A lot of the opposition doesn't come, I think, from the fact that, you know, someone is making money, it's that someone who isn't part of the establishment and is making money and, not being an attorney, not being a an employee of a public agency.

They go, well, how come this person, you know, it's not.

So let me hit you with this.

You talked about training.

You've talked about the Association of Cities and Counties.

Now here comes Nick Brown.

The new attorney general opens up a public records and transparency office shop within the AG's office, appoints Morgan D'amaro to be the chief transparency counsel.

Do you see this as another case of Fox guarding the hand House, where the objectives are to kind of government cover government's, behinds a little bit or no, are you optimistic that there's a true effort here to be to encourage transparency, to train correctly, and to remedy some of the things you've been so active in years past in the courts to do.

Well, I like Nick Brown.

And again, I've seen him for years.

He was part of the Sunshine Commission, back when Pam Roach was on it back ten him 20 years ago.

I think he's, I think he's trying to do as best he can in the context of that.

I my main concern with Nick Brown is his connections to the Pacific Law Group, who has some rather unorthodox practices.

They represented Burian in a case where, they had a, a press conference.

A quorum of the council was there.

They talked about, you know, enforcement, law enforcement about their draconian homelessness, policy core municipal thing.

I mean, obviously, within arguably within, open public meetings, act.

So his connection to Pacific Law Group, concerns me, but I haven't seen anything about what he's doing that shows that it's in bad faith.

I think he's actually trying to.

You know, Morgan D'amaro is a pretty honorable attorney.

I think, they're actually trying to fix things.

And, you know, they certainly need to, because they're, the attorney general's, search procedures, need a little bit a little revamping.

I've struggled for years with this.

Yeah.

Why do you think where does the propensity for secrecy come from?

It seems to me that being transparent would be so much easier in some ways.

What's the genesis of this?

Well, some of it is an attitude I mean, Certain public officers don't have respect for the people they govern.

It's like Machiavelli says, the armed man despises the unarmed man.

A lot of some public officials despise the people who are beneath them because, you know, they they have no power.

And, you know, your average, average person in our society is disempowered.

You know, they only own as much as the government lets them keep.

And, you know, they dragged into court, they're terrified.

Their cities tell them what whether they can build they they, you know, they have virtually unchecked power over building permits.

So do you how they go to the kids, go to school, they don't have any power over that.

So I think a lot of it is just the attitude that, you know, we are in power and, you you shouldn't question us.

That's a legislative privilege in a nutshell, right?

Yes.

And, that one just got decided today, unfortunately.

But, I think the decision I, was fairly well balanced and, one of the judges ruled or held that the, Constitution, it's plain language, does not provide the privilege.

Of course, they hung their hat on, executive or the, separation of powers, but I, I differ, and we'll see what the Supreme Court says.

So that's going to head into the legislative privilege is heading to the Supreme Court.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, there's a, a companion case as well.

And either way, it would have gone to the Supreme if they had a lost state of appeal last couple of minutes here.

What is your what is your message to the people of Washington?

It seems like people maybe need to dig in a little bit on this.

What do you recommend?

How can average people get involved?

They're not going to go to the extent you have with, you know, a dozens of court cases, under your belt.

What can average folks do?

Well, the real problem is agencies, and a lot of it, cities and counties, with holding records because they're doing something wrong.

I mean, some do it just from the attitude, but some of them are actually, doing bad acts or not.

Not granting you rights or not issuing you a permit properly.

And that's where, you know, citizens need to, learn how to file records requests, very politely file requests get the information.

But, you know, if the if a city or county is, is doing things that you think are questionable.

File a detailed public records request to see what the, you know, communications are, what the policies are, behind that.

And at least then you'll know what's going on.

And in some cases, again, in a very small minority of cases, they're hiding things because they're doing something illegal or they're hiding money, or they're when you we in our last 60s here, when you take this and put it all in the bucket and come out with something at the end, are you generally optimistic or pessimistic about the state and nature of government transparency going forward?

Well, there are problems, including like the automatic, exemption if you delete records, but it's gotten better over the last 25 years.

We've made amazing progress.

Okay.

990% of agencies I deal with take the public Records Act seriously and, get get records out as quickly as possible.

Okay.

So it's I see things improving.

I see the attorney general's initiative as a positive step.

I see the power of the, you know, forces of darkness, like the cities and counties, waning over time.

And, you know, we we live in a, you know, open society.

And I think it's getting a lot better from it's certainly much better than it was 25 years ago.

Well, I have to tell you, I we close the show with me feeling a lot better about it than I thought I was going to after hearing from you.

And so thanks so much for coming in northwest now and again.

I, one of the people of the state of Washington, know who you are a little bit in that the instrumental role you've played in promoting transparency here in the state.

Thank you.

Well thank you.

You have a great you have a good day.

so?

Is Arthur West a profiteer and a gadfly or an advocate doing important work that benefits the people of Washington and advances the cause of government transparency?

The bottom line my answer is yes.

Despite the complaints, I think the people of Washington need him at least until the highest ideals of the Public Disclosure Act of 1972 are routinely and consistently achieved.

My thanks to Arthur West for coming to the northwest now.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking.

You can find this program on the web at KBTC dot org, streaming through the PBS app, or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

That's going to do it for this edition of northwest.

Now, until next time, I'm Tom Layson, thanks for watching.

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