Jim Camden Commentary: Senate GOP Secures Documents, Expert to Read Them

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Senate Republicans trying to delve deep into the early-released-inmate scandal may be learning first hand the truth of the old adage “be careful what you ask for because you may get it.”

Early last week they muscled subpoenas for Department of Corrections records through the committee process, resulting in the issuance of the first legislative subpoenas since the Bangles were singing “Walk Like an Egyptian.” (1987 for those who think that reference is too obscure.)

This was necessary, they insisted, because their public records request to the department after the scandal broke was returned to them after nine days with nothing but a note saying they had sent it to the wrong office.

Nine whole days, they fumed, just to be told to resubmit it to the proper bureaucrat. The fact that the nine-day stretch included the holiday weekends with Christmas and New Years was rarely mentioned, and their peevishness got little sympathy from the Capitol press corps who regularly wait much longer for any sign of public records requested.

One could argue that someone from the caucus staff could have checked online to see exactly who gets a public records request at the department. But one could also argue that someone in the department should have had the sense to walk the request down the hall to the proper office, even though there appears to be nothing in state public records statutes that says legislators get a special deal.

Subpoenas were issued Tuesday, and by Thursday documents were coming in. Senate Republicans now confronted the bigger problem that public records seekers often have: Someone has to read all this stuff. Thursday evening they had a special meeting to hire their own investigator, Seattle attorney Mark Bartlett, a partner at a major law firm who had agreed to give them a deal by cutting his regular hourly fee of $615 nearly in half, to $325.

Senate Democrats managed to get a $50,000 spending cap on this, but if the investigation deepens Republicans could ask for more. GOP leaders also had a return volley for Gov. Jay Inslee, who in questioning the need for subpoenas at this point touted the credentials of his two outside investigators, former federal prosecutors Carl Blackstone and Robert Westinghouse.

Bartlett, according to Law and Justice Committee Chairman Mike Padden, R-Spokane Valley, used to be in the U.S. attorney’s office in Seattle, too. At one point, he was even supervisor for Blackstone and Westinghouse. And Bartlett’s has bipartisan cred, Padden said. He once worked for former U.S. Rep. Tom Foley.

 



Roach vs. Owen

The long-standing enmity between Sen. Pam Roach and Lt. Gov. Brad Owen heated up recently, with Owen bouncing the Sumner Republican off a special task force on human trafficking after he got several earfuls of bad reports about her conduct at the group’s first meeting.

In the past, he wrote in a memo titled Indecorous and Inappropriate Conduct, she was warned about “poor public behavior and abusive treatment of staff.” Her comments to participants — who included human trafficking victims and staff of the Commerce Department that set up the December session — were more of the same, he said.

“I do not have the legal authority to remove you from the Senate,” Owen wrote. But he did appoint her to the committee at the suggestion of her caucus, so he could unappoint her.

Roach said she was critical of the department for taking seven months after the task force was authorized to hold the first meeting. She also shot back that unlike Owen, she hasn’t been fined by the Executive Ethics Board — something that happened in 2014 over questions about an anti-bullying nonprofit and for which Owen insists he did nothing wrong.

This should make it all the more interesting any time Roach, in her job as Senate president pro tem, takes over control of the floor for Owen.

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Jim Camden is a columnist for the Spokesman Review.