Yesterday, May 30, Kitsap Superior Court Judge Jeannette Dalton ruled against the City of Bainbridge Island in the Public Records Act lawsuit brought by two citizens. The citizens alleged that two City Councilmembers violated the PRA by refusing to turn over work-related e-mails, deleting work-related e-mails from their personal computers, and refusing to turn over their computers for inspection. Judge Dalton agreed and ruled also that the City violated the PRA by failing to perform an adequate search of the computers.
The Councilmembers will now be required to turn over their computers after all, and the City will be held responsible for the plaintiffs’ attorney fees and costs, an amount to be determined at a later hearing.
The PRA requests were made separately by Islanders Althea Paulson and Bob Fortner in June of 2013. Their requests concerned public records relating to the City-run water utility. Councilmember Sarah Blossom, an attorney, complied with the request, and Paulson and Fortner alleged that her e-mails indicated she had been corresponding electronically with then-Mayor Debbi Lester and Councilmembers Dave Ward and Steve Bonkowski about the water utility. After Paulson and Fortner filed suit in August to obtain the rest of the e-mails, Lester also complied, and she was dropped from the suit. But Councilmembers Ward and Bonkowski refused.
In her ruling, Judge Dalton wrote that Paulson’s and Fortner’s PRA requests followed a Council meeting in June at which Bonkowski introduced an unscheduled presentation on outsourcing management of the City’s water utility. He, Blossom, Lester, and Ward constituted a majority and voted to change the agenda to permit the presentation, leading Fortner and Paulson to suspect that the four had been communicating outside the Council about the utility.
Judge Dalton wrote that, by conducting City business on their personal e-mails, Ward and Bonkowski “impliedly consented to the inspection of their personal computers and/or personal email accounts.” She also found that their practice of deleting e-mails was contrary to the City’s Governance Manual and violated the PRA. Dalton had a strong admonishment for the Councilmembers, writing that “they knew well what the government requires, and any hesitation by them in turning over any such responsive emails is a grave concern for the people of Bainbridge Island.”
The Judge also had strong words for the City: “[I]t took only 24 hours for the COBI to produce a large volume of emails from its servers, but months to produce a handful of emails from Mr. Ward and Mr. Bonkowski.” She further chided the City for failing to search for the deleted e-mails, even though both Ward and Bonkowksi admitted to deleting them, until “it was too late in time to have preserved or retrieved” them.
Judge Dalton is requiring the Councilmembers to turn over their computers now to be searched for forensic evidence.
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Photo by Julie Hall.
