State appeals court will hear CFJ arguments this week in a public records case rooted in allegations of public corruption involving the hiring of former Commissioner Phil Harris’s son.
The election is long over but the search for the truth goes on.
Two and a half years after Bonnie Mager defeated incumbent Spokane County Commissioner Phil Harris, an important public records case that may shed new light on whether the former commissioner abused his office, and whether county officials covered up for him, is about to get a hearing before a state appeals court panel.
The case was brought by the Center for Justice on behalf of the Neighborhood Alliance of Spokane County, the non-profit organization for which Mager served as executive director before she decided to challenge Harris for the Spokane 
County District #3 commissioner’s seat. It stems from a public records request that Mager and the Alliance filed after a county whistle-blower discovered a copy of a new seating chart in the county’s Building and Planning Department which appeared to identify office spaces for two new employees.
To say the seating chart looked suspicious, puts it mildly. The county had yet to publicly advertise the job openings for the positions the employees would fill and one of the names on the seating chart was “Steve.” Two months later, Steve Harris, the son of the long-standing commissioner was officially hired into the Building and Planning Department.
Part of what Mager’s records request sought were records that would formally identify who the “Steve” on the chart was. The county has argued, in response, that it doesn’t have to respond to this part of the records request because it essentially asks the county to provide an answer to a question, rather than a responsive document.
But atop the legalistic arguments are two vivid issues:
Was Spokane County, including county officials loyal to Harris, engaged in government corruption?
And, secondly, can citizens like Mager and the Alliance use the state’s public records act as a tool to discover corruption?
The county won the first round. A year ago, Lincoln County Superior Court Judge Philip A. Borst, granted a county motion to dismiss the case. Even though Judge Borst conceded that county officials may have acted purposely to destroy records on a key employee’s computer, he said that it was up to the Alliance’s lawyers to provide the court with clear evidence that the destruction was willful.
“I’m not saying you’re not right,” the Judge said to CFJ attorney Breean Beggs. “You could be right, from my standpoint the facts aren’t there to back you up.”
In its appeal on behalf of the Alliance, the Center argues that there are undisputed facts to show that the County purposely did not conduct a responsive and adequate search for the requested records and that “the evidence strongly suggests it may have actually destroyed them.”
Moreover, the Center’s brief recounts the repeated and mostly fruitless efforts to conduct discovery in the case, including how it was frustrated in its efforts to depose the county’s key witness, the county Building & Planning department employee on whose computer the seating chart was created.
In reply, Pat Risken, the attorney representing the County, argues that the Center’s lawyers are still grasping for evidence and documents that don’t exist.
Risken charges that via its lawyers the Neighborhood Alliance “has finally admitted that the intent of its May 16, 2005 request and this lawsuit was to create a vehicle for unbridled access to any corner of Spokane County’s offices that it sees fit to investigate.”
“According to [the Alliance],” he wrote, “the Public Records Act is actually a scalpel; it may be used to expose and excise perceived corruption.”
Ultimately, Risken argues for the county, “the core fact of the case is that the records requested did not exist.”
In their reply brief, CFJ lawyers wrote: “Of course [the Alliance's] reason for filing the request was verification of suspected wrongdoing. This is no surprise as it is the very purpose of the [public records act]– “to provide a mechanism by which the public can be assured that its public officials are honest and impartial in the conduct of their public offices.”
Oral arguments on the appeal are scheduled for Thursday morning, May 28th, at 10:30 before a Division III Court of Appeals panel in Spokane.