Category Archives: Open Government

Jun 09

My Draft Testimony on the Proposal to Gut the Lakewood Landmarks and Heritage Advisory Board

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Posting this here to share with other members of the landmarks board, and any other interested parties, to get suggestions for what I should say Monday should the City Council grant any of us the ability to comment. If you’d like more context for this post, the original post on the subject is here. 

Members of the city council, and other fellow citizens, thank you for the opportunity to comment. My name is Walter Neary. I live in Lakewood. I was the Lakewood Landmark and Heritage Advisory Board’s first chairman back in 2000 and have served on it except when I had the honor of being elected twice to the Lakewood City Council in 2003 and 2007.

First of all, I realize that many of you individual council members were probably as surprised about this proposal as LHAB was. These remarks are not addressed to you, except I hope you will agree that things are being handled very badly. There are really two things to talk about how: how this is being done, and the actual proposal. Let me get this straight: you have an advisory board that is entrusted with official city activity and business? You have an advisory board to which you send a liaison who is supposed to share news with the advisory board? And you have a proposal to dramatically change that organization that has not even been discussed from the start? That’s really sad. I am sorry if these comments interrupt the dialogue between city staff and council members – and you are all very important people – but Lakewood was founded to serve all citizens. Citizens outside city government are important too.

Just because there are no original members left on the city council does not mean your city staff or God forbid, any of you, should forget why we voted to become a city in 1995. We became a city to give all citizens a voice. In whatever the matter is, sometimes an individual voice might win, sometimes it might lose, or maybe it just educates, but in all cases, Lakewood citizens are meant to have a say. That’s why we give this government a share of our property taxes and entrust it to form wise policy and make good decisions.

The way this is supposed to work is that any one of you, or someone on the city staff, or a member of the public says, “Gee, I have a question about LHAB.” Or, if you want to skip that step, you might say, “Gee, I have no understanding of LHAB and historic preservation, but I am against present practice. I want to change things.”  It would be common courtesy to then begin a dialogue with LHAB. To ambush us with something buried in a city council agenda is a betrayal. This is the sort of thing Pierce County government did all the time in the 1990s, and the county’s relentless failure to represent actual citizens did more to encourage the vote for cityhood than most other campaign issues. People want to be respected and heard. If you are doing this to other entities in the city, I would be shocked and horrified. I really hope this was a fluke.

In terms of the actual proposal, I think what most offends me is that somehow all of this is justified by a phrase “in recognition of various property rights.” This is a variation of the common theme about historic preservation I would expect to hear on AM radio or a sitcom. I guess I should be thankful the staff report does not use the words “unAmerican” or “communist” because there is a track record of people using those words to force change as well.

Now, people will sometimes say, “oh, those historic preservation people hate property rights,” just as people will sometimes say politicians are only in it for themselves and city staff only exist to build their own empire. When I was on the city council, I didn’t like it when people said we were corrupt and had lost touch with the public. I would think you have to be the same way, because you know how hard you work to try to be fair and to do the right thing. So maybe you can imagine how we on LHAB feel now. Using sloppy  and uninformed thinking and slogans to justify public policy is not a promising start for a discussion. I would suggest the phrase “in recognition of various property rights” be saved for bad AM talk radio, and that we instead have a mature discussion about what historic preservation really is and what we all want for Lakewood.

If the overriding interest of the staff and anyone on the council is defending property rights like a talk radio host means the phrase, LHAB is the least of your worries. The big chains on our freedom are the Lakewood comprehensive plan and the zoning code. They damage property rights far more than a history ordinance. For example, I’m pretty sure the code prevents someone from buying the house next to you, tearing it down and putting a gravel quarry in there. If you want to get on Fox News and be a hero, tear up the comp plan and zoning code. I should add that if anyone on city staff plans to do that, I hope you learn from this experience and tell the planning commission at the start of the process.

In that vein, your LHAB has actually worked very hard to juggle a variety of issues and priorities and struggled with matters of property rights and other rights. If you’d like to have a discussion about those, I know the members are available. I’d just say a couple things, first, we’ve never accepted a proposal from a person who was not a property owner, two, a lot of Lakewood history should be preserved and three, if you’re going to pass this ordinance, then just kill off LHAB. The LHAB would be a waste of your valuable city staff’s time, and mine. To keep up LHAB for no purpose would be a sham.

Because I can’t believe that the city is spending its time to find ways to serve AM talk radio slogans, the only thing I can come up with to explain this proposal is that you or someone talking to city staff wants to do a development that would tear down a landmark or potential landmark. That of course would make gutting LHAB sensible because we might actually stand in the way of something conceived within city government. Yet wouldn’t it be more constructive, transparent and honest to discuss that proposal than to gut an entire ordinance? Discussing the real issue and not hiding behind a smokescreen would be keeping with the spirit of cityhood.

Some of the people who have submitted their homes for designation have already gone to their graves thinking the city of Lakwood was going to protect the history they loved. Tonight, I’m looking at a staff report that ditches history and ditches all the hours of work by your own volunteers to support a political catch-phrase. I really hope our city governent doesn’t plan to make history by treating its own citizens with such, if you will pardon the pun, monument-al disrespect.

Feb 28

Why Proposed Legislation in WA State would be Bad for the Public’s Right to Know

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Props to the Association for Washington Cities, for inviting another point of view to their February 2013 legislative conference. I represented the Washington Coalition for Open Government in expressing concerns about HB 1128.

Props to the Association for Washington Cities for inviting another point of view to their February 2013 legislative conference in Olympia. I represented the Washington Coalition for Open Government in expressing concerns about proposed changes to the Washington Public Records Act.

A bill in front of the Washington Legislature, HB 1128, would be a lousy deal for the public and a sweet deal for city governments. Having been an elected official for eight years, I’m sympathetic to people in city governments. But the public always has to come first. That’s why I stand with the Washington Coalition for Open Government on this one.

The bill comes from the Association of Washington Cities, a trade group that represents cities. Their stated concern is that some citizens are using the public records act to harass cities. There’s no question this is true. The public records act is a tool. Tools can be used in many ways. Tools can be used for many reasons.  You can use a tool like a hammer for something good, like framing a house, or something bad, like hitting a kid.

Of course, most uses of a tool are usually good. With the public records act, some people request public records from government to discover information and sometimes uncover abuse or other issues that deserve to be known to the public. Yet like a person who might use a hammer to hurt someone, other people file public records act requests because they are angry at a person or city. They are unhappy with government, and a deep overly broad public records act request is a great way to create discomfort and disruption.

Meanwhile, still others compulsively seek records because this is how their craziness comes out. One thing you learn about serving in government is that power attracts the attention of the kind of people who used to be buried in anonymous graves outside Western State Hospital.

But exceptions should not drive the rule. And the rule, also known as the First Amendment, is clear:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

To the discomfort of anyone supporting HB 1128, the First Amendment does not say this…

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances unless someone in the government thinks the person is creating inconvenience or being nasty.

If it did say that, HB 1128 would be constitutional. Meanwhile, here’s another rule. This is what the Washington state law actually says:

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 so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have created. This chapter shall be liberally construed and its exemptions narrowly construed to promote this public policy and to assure that the public interest will be fully protected.

To the discomfort of those supporting HB 1128, state law does not say this:

The people of this state yield their sovereignty to the people in the agencies that serve them. The people, in delegating authority, will receive information if they ask nicely and don’t offend anyone in government personally or professionally. The people will wait to be told in case any information might be uncomfortable to anyone in government and certainly wouldn’t want to trouble anyone in government to provide the information if it’s a lot of work. This chapter shall be liberally construed for the convenience and personal satisfaction of those employed by government so they may enjoy their experience in civil service or public office.

The poster child for people who want to limit your potential access to records is a city councilwoman from Pasco who was the subject of public records act requests after voting a way someone didn’t like. Do I think it’s cheesy to retaliate against someone in public office that way? Absolutely. Very much so. But does that mean you limit the unhappy citizen’s right to ask for records? You can’t. Because when you do that, you limit everyone’s right.

This brings up a final thought that I can share having been a city councilman. I learned this the hard way. There is one other thing the law does not say. Nowhere is it written “Your experience as a local elected official will be pleasant.” Fact is, people can make you very miserable as an elected official if you let them. People get personal. People get nasty. When you are an elected official, you are a target. The way you address that is to deal with challenge and stress like an adult – not try to gut the public’s right to know what’s going on in government.