The city of Seattle on Monday agreed to pay The Seattle Times nearly $160,000 to settle a lawsuit that accused the Seattle Police Department of delaying the release of public records through a policy that grouped multiple requests from the same person.
Lawyers representing the city informed the court Monday they have ceased grouping requests.
The Seattle Times prevailed in a lawsuit that sought to end the Police Department's tactic where it would only fulfill one request before beginning to work on the next, resulting in delays that stretched years. The Times’ lawsuit alleged that grouping delayed public access to materials that provide a window into government actions, in this case documents requested by a Times reporter related to the tenure of fired police Chief Adrian Diaz.
King County Superior Court Judge Sandra Widlan ruled in January that grouping requests violated Washington state’s Public Records Act and ordered The Times and the city to negotiate details including expedited release of some delayed records and the financial terms.
The city agreed to pay The Times a nearly $70,000 penalty for violating the Public Records Act, $87,480 in attorney’s fees and $2,323.20 to reimburse expenses, according to a settlement agreement filed in King County Superior Court.
The Times’ lawyer, Kathy George, successfully argued in a Kent courtroom in January that the Police Department’s batching of requests and the arbitrary, distant dates of estimated completion that were provided to requesters violated Washington’s public records law.
“We don’t do this to make money. To the extent there are financial penalties in these public records act cases, the reasons they’re there at all is to provide a deterrent to agencies so they don’t continue violating the Public Records Act,” Michele Matassa Flores, executive editor of The Times, said Monday. “We know it’s taxpayer money, and we don’t want to cost the taxpayers a whole lot of money in these cases, but we do believe in the concept of these penalties as a deterrent.”
She noted the record requests included in The Times’ lawsuit were not complex, and by dragging its feet, SPD added to its own backlog of requests.
As of Feb. 2, 668 public records requests to the Police Department remained grouped in violation of the law. The Police Department stopped grouping new requests in January, immediately following the judge’s ruling. As of Monday, the city informed the court that it has completely ended grouping.
As part of the agreement struck Monday, the city agreed to release records related to three requests from Seattle Times journalists that had previously been delayed. The Times agreed to forgo further responses to its requests for certain calendar and travel records.
Matassa Flores said she was hopeful that newly sworn-in Mayor Katie Wilson and City Attorney Erika Evans will prioritize transparency and ensure that all city departments are abiding by the Public Records Act.
“I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they have their values in the right place, she said. "This is about transparency and democracy."
Spokesperson Sage Wilson said Monday in an email, Mayor Wilson believes in transparency in local government, and will work with all our departments on compliance with state public records law,”
Alan Pyke, a spokesperson for Evans’ office, said the city attorney’s office is not responsible for the past unlawful handling of records requests. He said individual city departments cleave their own paths for responding to requests.
The Times’ suit, filed in January 2025, accused the city of failing to honor an earlier agreement to limit batching of requests from a single requester. It focused on five requests filed in 2023 by Times reporter Mike Carter.
The requests sought records related to sexual harassment allegations and favoritism that became the basis for Diaz’s firing. Carter waited 19 months for the first installment of records, while his four other requests languished without progress because, under the batching policy, the Police Department would fully complete one request before starting on the next.
Jessica Goldman from the Summit Law Group, whom the city hired to defend it against The Times’ lawsuit, argued that SPD is simply overwhelmed with requests and claimed that eliminating batching would lead to still longer delays.
George, the lawyer representing The Times, countered that “inconvenience does not excuse strict compliance” with the law.
The Times’ suit originally sought up to $100 per day for each request stalled by the Police Department’s policy of batching requests, far more than The Times settled for.
“It’s important for the public to remember that this isn’t the first time the Seattle Police Department has done this,” Matassa Flores said. “This problem has been repeating itself for several years. We hope they’re finally realizing that they can’t get away with this.”
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