Lewis County Manager Erik Martin (second from left) shared his thoughts on public disclosures during Thursday’s budget presentation at the County Courthouse. Also pictured are Budget Manager Becky Butler (left) and Lewis County Commissioner Gary Stamper.
The Lewis County Board of County Commissioners tackled a host of challenges they annually contend with in formulating their budget — including monies earmarked for public disclosure costs — in an information session Thursday on their 2020 budget process.
The county commission is expected to adopt the final 2020 budget at the conclusion of a 10 a.m. public hearing on Monday, Dec. 2.
The preliminary 2020 budget shows total expenditures for all county funds in the amount of $119,743,548.00 and total revenues at $123,614,577.00.
Preliminary general fund revenues total $38,491.543.00 with expenditures at $40,209.841.00, with a projected shortfall of about $1.7 million. More than 50 percent of general fund dollars go to law enforcement and another 25 percent go to courts.
Budget Manager Becky Butler gave a presentation to members of the public in attendance, discussing the county’s efforts to hire a records manager, a public disclosure manager and an office manager to handle an inordinate amount of public requests they receive for documents that are prepared, owned, used or retained by any department or office of Lewis County government, excluding courts.
The process of fulfilling those requests, according to Butler, has also necessitated the help of an attorney from the Prosecutor’s Office to help oversee and handle the workload.
Many of the modifications and additions made to the public records department in recent years were also the result of “frequent requesters barraging us with a thousand requests,” said County Commissioner Edna Fund. “We want to be responsive, but we have folks who are taking advantage of the system.”
She described how many of those same individuals are making broad requests for “any-and-all” documents on a certain topic, which require a lot of time to process. She recounted one instance where a requester asked the county for every document that had a sheriff’s logo on it in the past five years.
County Commissioner Bobby Jackson also discussed repeat records requests and people who he said abuse the system in an effort to force the county to make a mistake.
“The idea was to trip us up someplace and we actually did have one that fell through the cracks and it’s one they sued us on. So, it’s turned into a cottage industry,” he said. “Like Edna said, we, like other counties, have had to form a whole new office for public disclosure. So, it seems like it has leveled off a bit. But for a while, I’ve got to tell you, we used to get dozens per day.”
According to Washington State law, state and local agencies are required to respond to a public request within five business days.
“So, I would say that besides legislative action, we’re looking for ways to make this better,” added County Manager Erik Martin. “One of the things we think is a solution to relieve some of this is to provide a portal for the public to get as much information as possible that we feel is appropriate to release and just make it available on the website.”
The portal would be accessible through www.lewiscountywa.gov, he said, and it would allow residents to review documents produced by the Board of County Commissioners. It would also enable users to find specific information through a county search engine.
Currently, the Lewis County Coroner’s Office is working on a request expected to take six years to fulfill with the limited staffing that department has in place, according to Butler. Meanwhile, she reported that the prosecuting attorney hired to help out with public records requests is working on several claims that have been filed against Lewis County in relation to department services.
“The counties do want to provide the documents; they do want to provide transparency. But some requests are for ‘any-and-all’ and everything we have. It’s really difficult to fulfill those requests,” she concluded.
Other budget challenges addressed by County Commissioners included monies set aside for unfunded mandates, indigent defense services, revenue limitations and timber revenue, among others.
