Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Unbolted live with me. M.J. bolt, your host. I have got Steve from Inland Auditing Meeting Media here today with us to share about his work. Steve, welcome. Thanks for being here.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Thanks for having me, mj. Really appreciate it.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: You betcha, you betcha. I've been getting to know Steve's work here for the last couple months, and I've been very impressed. He does some great digging and deep diving, and I wanted to do this podcast with him to help share with everybody how what he's been uncovering these last couple years. So, Steve, before we get into your work, let everybody know kind of what led you to this. I mean, you know, as we were talking, you probably didn't think when you were a teenager that this was something you were going to be doing. So when you, you know, what led you to this space in your life where you're like, I have got to start digging on what is going on with our government.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Sure, yeah.
So thanks again for having me, mj. I decided to get into this because having worked as a business consultant prior, I was seeing these issues. And I think, like a lot of people, you know, you wake up, you're getting ready to go to work, and you're listening to something political, right? In the shower, maybe got a channel playing and you rage out, right? You're just so angry. Like, you've just been listening to stuff for so long, and instead of just continuing to be frustrated about it, knowing that it was just gonna. I was just gonna listen to the next news story the next day, I decided to go out and see if this stuff was really happening. And what those things were is there was a channel on YouTube. There is a channel on YouTube called Sticks Hexenhammer.
And there's a guy up in New Hampshire, he has. He's a libertarian, and he would just provide commentary on things.
And I found his insight interesting. And after listening to a lot of that, I thought, and then watching linked Stories, I thought, is it really like this? I mean, is it seriously this bad?
Because sometimes I would see people go out and they yell and scream and they're extraordinarily confrontational in these videos.
And I thought, well, it's got to be that, right? So if I go out and I try to emulate what's being done here, it won't turn out that way. But I was wrong. It did. So even using my legal knowledge and my acumen and whatnot, I would still get these crazy encounters with government.
And so initially, it was. I Think what a lot of people refer to as just First Amendment auditing. I'm just testing the government to see if they're going to respect the liberties that we all possess.
And then what happened is I started getting people reaching out to me. When I would do public records requests, for example, they'd be like, oh, Steve, really like your professionalism. You're not antagonistic, you're nice. Got a little. Little wit here. It's really great.
I've got a lead for you.
So it started out with that first lead, and then I would let people know, hey, you know, I got a. I got a lead. This is where I'm going here. And it just went from there. All of a sudden, I started getting a lot. Now I get about.
I'd say, on average, 110 tips, leads a month.
Of that, I get about eight to 12 that pass the vetting process.
And that's what takes me out into the field to do the work that I'm doing.
And, yeah, that's really what got me here, was just being tired of seeing the insanity, frankly, and wanting to see if it was really that bad, because it was so absurd to me.
I couldn't believe it. But yet when I went out there, it was just like that. Even if you're nice, professional, whatever you want to call it.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Well, and this is a unique approach. I mean, Steve. So I've got to dig into this further because, you know, most people don't wake up and go, I gotta go audit the government on what they're doing. And so, I mean, what led you into thinking along that track?
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Well, initially, like I said, the initial thing was it's gotta be everyone else's. I know that sounds terrible to say this out loud, but it's gotta be everybody else, not me. It's gotta be all these other people's approaches, right? And if I go about this in a reasonable way, it won't be that way. But then it was. And so then I thought, why is this happening? So then it would be going and doing records requests to get their policies regarding how they interact with people.
And between doing those public records requests and then also getting more tips and leads, things started coming together in a way where I was discovering patterns of abuse. I know we're all shocked by this from the government.
And I started noticing, like, hey, the government's just completely tossing out the rule book as it relates to itself and only holding the people to account.
So as I started looking at that, especially regarding records requests, transparency of the government, I started running across significant issues, delays, installment issues, just straight up violating the retention schedules, not producing records the way they're supposed to, not abiding by case law.
And that was just me pursuing things like, hey, there's an oil spill at this school district's bus transportation center or whatever.
And parallel to that were these transparency issues. And I thought, whoa, this is even worse than, like, maybe the oil spill issue. Because if citizens, if the press cannot go out and make these requests, how can they get the records? And if they're going to hide the records, like, for example, the Office of Minority Women's and Business Enterprises, I have evidence that they've been intentionally destroying records at the behest of the director of that state agency by the actual public records officer who made a complaint to the aggressive.
And what happened? Nothing.
I've got the emails.
So that kind of stuff that made me go, oh, my gosh, this is just unparalleled insanity what's going on here.
So that's kind of like what got me. Yeah. To that from where?
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Just like digging into, like, local things.
Like, you brought up the oil spill at a school district, and you obviously have an eye or knack for understanding policy as it's written. So, I mean, that's a unique talent skill set as it is. Right.
And. And you just saw things not lining up. You're like, wait a second, you know, I'm supposed to be able to access these records or access this information. You already knew your rights.
So that, I mean, there's a lot there that give you that foundation to kind of go after some of this.
These stories. Correct?
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Yeah, correct. So because of my consultation work in the past, I said I did business consultation, but I also did, like, public administration consultation. So knowing how RCW's, WACs, case law, just stuff like that works, what I was able to understand was when I was trying to go and investigate what's going on, the first issue I'd run across is I go there to just make the public records request, right? Just show up and they lose their mind because I'm recording my interaction with my servants and they.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: I'm laughing because I've seen that. I've seen your videos. And to our audience, if you haven't seen Steve's videos yet in the auditing media videos he does, he is not afraid to go there and start recording. And you're right. I mean, some of the. What you get met with is.
Get met with is quite shocking.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: It is. And that's what's nuts is like. And you know There has only been, I think, two, maybe three times where on video it started to get a little ugly. And one was when it looked like a state patrolman, state trooper was going to assault me.
And there was another time, I cannot remember that one. But generally, I mean, and even then, it's like, I'm just assertive. I'm not aggressive. And it's. Here I am being polite, professional, reasonable, and they are coming at me with the things that you're seeing from the stories. It's like, why are you behaving like this? You know, I'm just here to get a public records request. And then the other thing that they do is, is like at the Auburn School District, when I was there working on that oil spill story, I went into the transportation center, like the parking area where they have all the buses and stuff, but there's no restriction on access to that. So you walk in, you're looking around, you're taking photo and video, and all of a sudden they send the Auburn police to unlawfully trespass you from being lawfully present, where you're allowed to be.
And of course, you know why that happened? Because as I learned later, their lawyer admitted that they did have an oil spill and they failed to provide those records when I requested them.
So. But that took a year and a half to a year and three quarters to have that eventually come out. And this is what I'm learning is the MO of the government, Washington State, at all levels. Now, if they know that they're guilty of something, like, let's say they didn't file a report with the Washington State Department of Ecology for an oil spill, they will release records to you in installments, and they will have the most salient and disadvantageous records to their agency at the very end of those two years of installments, if they even provide them.
And so that's why I focus on the transparency stuff, is because if you don't know the Public Records act inside and out, the case law that supports it, that's been ruled on, the administrative codes and whatnot, you can't actually get to holding their feet to the fire.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: They will make you just jump through hoops and they'll put you off and they'll, you know, say all kind of things that if you don't know what the law says and that, like you said, the administrative code, they will just take you on a wild fish hunt, huh?
[00:11:21] Speaker A: Yeah. They'll throw out all this jibber jabber, gobbledygook at you, either lying or just being incompetent and say, well, because of X, Y and Z, we can't provide these documents or whatever, like for example, body worn camera footage. If they exempt, if they use the exemption codes. If you don't dig into those exemption codes, often from what my experience has shown me, is they will exempt themselves unlawfully from things that they're not supposed to be exempting themselves from. So you have to go through the exemption codes and say, okay, this part was maybe someone's driver's license, let's say, shown in the video, body worn camera footage. Okay, fair enough, there is an exemption for that. But what about if it shows that employee's calendar in the background? Because maybe it's showing a monitor, a screen.
There is no exemption for that, so they shouldn't be exempting that. What they don't want is you having information about how they go about their daily business. But they're a servant and you're entitled to see that.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: Right. Well, and, and I think what's also unique, and you've brought this up a couple times, is we have a lot of people here in our state that are, that are taking it upon themselves, you know, everyday citizens like you, like me to help Doge, if you will, our own government here in Washington state. We know the government's not going to do it right on itself. And so we have a lot of people that have been doing, you know, public records requests, digging into records and trying to follow the money and figuring out. So I think what's unique about your approach, again, is that you do this in person.
So we've had other people on Michael Easton who talked about, you know, how he uses public records requests to find out information about what our government is doing or not doing. But here you are going and doing those public record requests and person.
And, and so it's kind of interesting because it's just another piece of this puzzle of how things work in our state or don't work like they're supposed to. And you're finding grievance upon grievance of them not following their own, Our own laws.
Yeah, records.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: Right, absolutely. And, and the reason also the in person is so important is because they will just straight ignore you. They will not return emails, in many cases, they will not return phone calls.
And this is where it spins out in an even crazier way because, you know, I'm a Gen Xer, so I'm used to socializing with people, dealing with people, and I know the younger generations a lot of times just want to deal with maybe text or an app. Right.
But the thing is, is when you realize that they're going to interactions by way of those conventions, whether it's a phone call or, you know, voicemail, email, whatever.
Well, the only option then is to in fact go seek redress of grievances as your first Amendment pretty in person. And that's why we can go in person.
And that is when it opened up another Pandora's box for me to understand the eat insanity running amok in this state, which is if you go to the Washington State Capitol complex right now, just pick a day that the complex is open, 90 to 93% of every building will be 95% empty.
There will be no one in there.
Now a perfect example is the Washington State Department of Transportation.
It's a huge building. The headquarters in Olympia, for those of you not familiar with, is southeast of the old Thurston County Courthouse, which now houses like the Department of Our Call Archaeology and the Office of Minority Women's Business Enterprises. It is a huge building. It houses, I think, if I remember correctly, somewhere between 12 and 1500 people. If every person was in a a seat.
You watch my stories that include the Washington State Department of Transportation, you will see that they have made the foyer a boxed in area that is approximately 15ft wide and about 6 to 7ft deep. That is right where the front desk is. And they've got signs you are not allowed to go. No member of the public is allowed to go anywhere in that building beyond that 10 by 7 foot area or 15 by 7 foot area at all for any reason. And I got on video the head of security admitting the building is empty during the day with the exception of about 15 to 20 people total.
It's on video like they admit it multiple times. Because I've gone back to that building three or four times.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: Wow. And that's the Department of Transportation.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Correct. But it's not just the Department of Transportation. It's all those agencies right around there. If you go to the Employment Security Department, the old director of esd, Phil White, he gave me an interview and it was after this crazy encounter in Auburn at the Employment Security Department there with a building owner. And when he interviewed or when I interviewed him, he took me back into past the locked doors. There's no one in the building.
And that's why they don't want you going into these buildings. Because then it calls into question, where are the employees?
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: What are they doing?
[00:17:13] Speaker B: Steve, how long have you been doing this kind of work? Where you've been going and going into these buildings and seeing this because I'm curious if it changed because of COVID.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: Yeah, well, great question. So I first started gathering content. And this is worth pointing out, I first started gathering content in.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: 2121.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: Yeah. I didn't publish content until 2023. January 19th.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Unfortunately, what happened is my data protection wasn't good and I lost a whole bunch of material initially, so that delayed my release. And then I also just built back up new stories, and that's when I started publishing in 2023. It wasn't until about six months after that.
So around July of 2023, where I was just following leads, I would go in and I would seek assistance and they'd be like, well, there's no one here to help you with that. I'm like, well, where are they at? Well, they work remotely. I'm like, but it. It's 2023. I could, you know, we're past all this. And in fact, it wasn't. It wasn't. But just two months later, in March of 2023, when Governor Inslee's executive order regarding distance working teleworking was rescinded, so they had already been pulling back on that anyways.
And I would be like, well, how do I get a hold of these people? Oh, email them. Okay. I'd email. No response.
And relating to Washington State Department of Transportation, I then emailed them with a public records request asking for their teleworking policy, and they just straight refused it. They're just like, we're not. No, not happening. We're just not going to respond to you anymore by email. So that's what got me to say, okay, I need to just physically go in.
And then when I've talked to James Sexton, the head of security for Washington State Department Transportation's headquarters building, I go in and he's like, yeah, there's no one here. I'm like, well, then what do I do? I literally. I'm on video saying, you're not responding to me for a public records request on, like, here's the email.
And now I come into seek redress of grievances regarding my inability to get these records because you're just refusing to respond. And there's no one in the building except for security and a receptionist.
And that's how they're. That's how they're facilitating this. That's how they're basically getting away from the public holding them to account. There's just no one around.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: Wow. Wow, that's amazing. Well, and it really Shows that this is, this is the work that we need to do to, to fix our government. You know, I'm reminded of when Elon and his Doge team were diving into, you know, all the things in the federal government and they were looking at how many people were, you know, teleworking, how many of these buildings were empty, how much waste. Right. I mean, there was big news about all that. This is. You're finding a similar situation, if not worse, right here in our own state, right in Olympia. I mean, just to name a few. I mean, we have state government agency offices all over the state. You are just. These are just a few that you've happened to go into.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think you laid that out perfectly. Because when I saw the Doge thing happening, it was ironic to me, perhaps serendipitous, because is, I was seeing the intent behind that.
I thought, wow, I mean, I'm living this when I go to work.
This is like what I'm witnessing. I'm capturing footage, audio, video, still photography of empty buildings. No one's showing up to work and not being able to get the things that you need appropriately. And that's what made me then address the issue of, you know, public records. It then made me think, okay, well, if public records cannot be attained and you can't get them in person, or at best they're going to drag out the installments for protracted periods of time until the most salient records are at the end of a two year installment process, the news has effectively run its course. The effect of whatever they're trying to either prevent or maintain is so established at that point that it's kind of irrelevant to the public. Right. You know what I mean? It's like if you had a bad policy, whatever it is, policy, tax.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: Yeah. If they can wait you out. Right.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: That's exactly what they're doing. And so getting to the index stuff that you and I have talked about quite a bit now, the reason that even came up is because, yeah, I'm sitting there, I do a lot of legal analysis. I love just reading legal stuff. I mean, literally, I am the guy at the end of the day will sit down and read a full SCOTUS ruling. Because I just love reading case law. It's very boring for most people.
Yes, I love it.
So I, I was very frustrated at the end of a work day. I can't remember what story I was working on, but I thought, I've got to be missing something in the Records Act. There's got to be some mechanism to combat this kind of obfuscation and bad actions on behalf of the state government. So I started going back through the Public Records act again and when I got to section 70 which covers many different things, section 70 also covered this index.
And when I looked at it and I was like, I don't remember reading this.
And I realized, oh my gosh. All the most important things that a citizen would find they want to get immediate access to are required to be indexed by name.
So if you call, you know, let's say a record, the office of the Governor's Human Resources Manual. Right. Let's say that's one of their documents, an administrative staff manual. And you want to get that.
One of the things that often happens during records request processes is a clarification request by the public records officer. You may call it something other than the human resources manual like the made up name I just provided. But we end up kind of talking past one another because though we're talking about the same thing, the title of it is different.
Yeah, this is where public records officers abuse the public like professional obfuscators. They will play games with the clarification process. But like I just don't know what you're talking about.
Can you clarify again?
And you go through this back and forth, back and forth forever and they're just waiting you out, stalling, trying to find a way to just make you quit and just stop requesting this.
And that's the point of the index. If you could go to the index and say I'm looking for X and they. And that agency literally calls it X and you're requesting the very name of the thing that they have in their index.
They can't ask for a clarification.
You know, there's nothing to clarify. It's like I'm asking for something that you call X. Bam, it's done. And the evidence of this is when I went to the Washington State Healthcare Authority as a follow up, I went in, they actually had the complete index ready. I was shocked.
I 700 pages.
So I pulled open the index and I looked for their teleworking policy and it was there. And I got my public records request done in 10 minutes. Said me only ever in the history of Washington State's public records.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: So. So there are examples of some agencies doing it. Correct. And you said it was the Washington State healthcare.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Yeah. In fact, if you want to see an example of that, the I can share this to you right now in private chat. The most recent link I just sent you that is to the treasurer story. And if you go to that, I'll give you the time stamp. Give me just a second. I'm just going.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: Hold on just a second.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Okay, I've got it pulled up now. My, my Internet has not been great today, so I don't know if I can play this. So no problem.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: If I need to, I can do that too.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: Okay. Did you have a time on there?
[00:26:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it's at.
Go to 4 minutes and 13 seconds.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: 4, 13. All right, let me get this queued up here. And so maybe it will be a little nicer when I try to share this.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: And if you need me to share, to present and do it, I can do that too.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: All right, let's give this a shot.
All right, can you see it up there on the screen?
[00:26:50] Speaker A: I can, yeah.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: Okay, let's give her play here.
[00:26:55] Speaker A: And did not happen.
[00:26:57] Speaker B: Tell us again what we're looking for.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: Yes. So this is me going in to do a follow up basically just to ask them some questions about something I had worked on. And I thought, well, while I'm here, because I did ask them for the index before.
Since it had been several months, I thought, well, I'll also ask them about the index because often what I like to do is I'm the dog that won't let the bone go.
I am unrelenting. If I have asked an agency about X, I will follow up forever.
And part of it is just.
[00:27:34] Speaker B: You have to do that.
[00:27:36] Speaker A: Yeah, part of it is just to demonstrate to the public, you know, which is newsworthy, the incalcitrance of the government. And if I just show them a thousand times that they don't care, at least I'm reporting to them with evidence. This is their behavior. So if you want to change this, you need to fire these people.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: So this is actually an example of what should be, what should be done. Correct. We're going to see an index here, I'm guessing. And, and so this is like, okay, this is how it should be. Is that correct?
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Correct. And what is so damaging about this to Governor Ferguson, our former Attorney General.
And I can, I'll get into the details on the specifics of why it is so damaging. But this goes to show exactly what it's supposed to be. So if you've got an executive agency of Washington State, the Health Care Authority, which is now in compliance. Good job. Health Care Authority with state laws, Public Records Act. How is it that Bobby and the rest of his goons are not actually in compliance with this? I mean, he's not only the head of the executive branch at this point, but for the last 12 years, he was providing legal advice during the time that I was going around asking for records indices.
So there's just no excuse. And I think it makes it even worse for the fact that he was the state's chief attorney, now he's the state's chief executive, and he just can't get it right. Well, it's because he doesn't want to. The records index turns out to be one of the most powerful things we have as a tool to hold the government to account. And I realized this is a nexus of achieving transparency on a level that we've never seen in our state's Records act before.
And I think that's why they're trying to avoid having it be presented.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: Interesting. Fascinating. And that's. That's what's so interesting to me about your work. And I want to get into your philosophy a little bit, but let's. Let's watch this clip here as an example of what you encountered. So here we go. Hopefully it will play.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: Have to submit a public records to do so. It was just simply available as required by statute.
[00:29:55] Speaker C: I'm here to inspect the public records index.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: Oh, okay, perfect.
[00:30:05] Speaker C: I was wondering if I could speak.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Wow. Open government mode. Activate form of openly transparent government agency. Go. As much as I like to give a fun nod to the wonder twins here from my childhood, I have to say, wow, again, look at this. Justin from the Healthcare Authority is coming out with the most robust transparent form of an index you've ever seen from any agency in the state of Washington. I'll be giving a complete follow up on this particular story soon. But for now, look at what government transparency journalism can achieve. Everyone. It is because of you all keeping my feet on the street so that I can report on these stories that this kind of change in government can happen. You're also going to see quickly how this records index, now that one is properly put together, can actually serve the public and very well indeed. Remember this index here, everyone. And in a few, how badly the Washington state treasurer and most of the rest of the executive branch is failing. Epically. The citizens they're supposed to serve to the pro.
To who? The pro. Who's the pro?
[00:31:09] Speaker C: The public records officer.
Now that's what I'm talking about. Look at you guys.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:18] Speaker C: Either you're one of the oracles at.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: Deli and you're a very old person.
[00:31:24] Speaker C: Having come from ancient Greek times and are a diviner.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:31:27] Speaker C: Or somebody told you I might be coming in to inspect the index. Now that rue knowing smile is leading.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Me to believe the latter.
Seriously, I, I don't want this to.
[00:31:41] Speaker C: Sound sarcastic because I know I've had some freedom disputes with you guys in.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: The past, but I'm proud of you.
[00:31:45] Speaker C: Guys for getting this squared away. Seriously, this is what I expect from my public employees. This is, is fantastic.
There it is.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: Oh, we found it.
[00:31:54] Speaker C: Is there any way.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: I don't know if they're allowing you.
[00:31:56] Speaker C: Guys to do this, but can I just get a copy machine copy of.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I think.
I don't see.
[00:32:05] Speaker C: There's a reason that.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: That's it right there.
[00:32:12] Speaker C: All right, guys. So as you guys saw from my previous stories, there were some, you know, disagreements with how freedom worked here at the hca. However, they have done a great job. I really just want to beat a dead horse here.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: Look at that.
[00:32:25] Speaker C: This whole thing right here just stopped the Public Records act from occurring. A request because I can come in, get this real quick. It's available. This is exactly what Washington State is supposed to have.
[00:32:37] Speaker A: Great job. Washington State healthcare authority. But why is this valuable? Well, first.
Wow.
[00:32:45] Speaker B: That'S. That's amazing. That's amazing, Steve. And so that's what it's supposed to look like, right?
[00:32:52] Speaker A: Correct. Yeah. And the fact that you can go in and achieve, attaining whatever record it is that's required by statute to be attained instantly on the spot is something that is devastatingly bad for a corrupt government.
Because if you can go in and ask for a final order, a declaratory order, an interpretive statement or a policy statement and get it instantly, they have to respond to potential problems that arise from the public's awareness and maybe calling them out in a way faster way. And they don't want that because we know in Washington State, the state government is. Well, all levels of government Washington State are profoundly corrupt.
And if they have to respond real time to a Mons Olympus sized amount of responses from the citizens, they won't have an ability to actually respond appropriately. And that rage will come at them. It will come at them in mass and they'll know they'll have to pay the piper for that.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: Right, right. So I want to get into. There's a couple of things I want to make sure to do. Number one, I want to make sure that you spell out for the public what is on our statutes, what is the law of the land in Washington state, what it should be. Right? This is, this is the law. And kind of give them the history. I mean, this isn't something recent Right. So I want to do that. But then I also want to make sure that we talk about why you do this approach, because I think some people could go, oh, gosh, public records requests, and it's like minutia and, you know, getting in the weeds. And it seems like such little things when we have such corrupt government.
So first of all, let's. Let's deal with the policy. Will you share with people what is the law around public records requests?
And then also this index that you've been talking about.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: Absolutely. You are such a great interviewer. You have great questions. Thank you.
So the Public Records act, first of all, is found in Title 42, Chapter 56 of Washington State's statutes. So for those of you that maybe are paying attention, maybe you're not from Washington or you've never heard of the rcws. It stands for the Revised Codes of Washington. Those are statutes.
Then there are administrative codes, which are the Washington administrative codes.
Think of codes as rules meant to help with the management of government, whereas statutes are the actual laws that are passed by bill to the governor and signed into law.
So administrative codes bear the weight of law, though they are not statute. With that being said, Title 42, Chapter 56 is the records act, and that was founded in or created in 1973. Well, actually 1972, but it went into effect January 1st in 1973, when Governor Evans was still governor.
And basically up to that point, citizens had been increasing.
They had increased their frustration not being able to get records and whatnot that they felt they should. So this was created now, back then, of note, and it is somewhat important is the RCW was RCW 42.17, and that changed in 1990.
And the reason that's important is because the initial version of the Public Records act had a very, very significant difference that relates to the governor story.
In 1973, the statute did not delineate between a local government agency, which would be like, let's say, the city of Everett, right. Or a school district, and a state agency like the Office of the Governor or, you know, OM WBE or Department of Transportation.
And because of this, it allowed all agencies to exempt themselves, because in the statute in 1973, it allowed them to say, if there's undue burdens, they don't have to create a records index. Well, the Office of the Governor and other state agencies did this back in 1973, but the law changed in 1990 to say we're actually going to delineate between local agencies and state agencies. And for any State agencies that did have an exemption, you're no longer allowed to have an exemption.
And that's where the problem comes in here. Several agencies did exempt themselves and did not reverse that in 1990.
They've been out of compliance since 1990 for 35 years.
[00:37:59] Speaker B: My goodness. And this is pretty amazing. I'll be honest. I have not looked at this chapter before. I cannot believe how big it is. I, I mean, I came from education, some of, you know, and so I looked at RCWs around education, and I thought those were, you know, tedious and a lot. This is, this is. I'm scrolling through this and this is all under the Public Records Act.
The, the one chapter which is now, like you said, 42.56.
And we're still scrolling through it.
[00:38:31] Speaker A: Yep. So it's insane. If you can scroll up to section 70, 42.5 6.070. That's actually the.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: Which one was it? Say it again.
[00:38:42] Speaker A: 42.5 6.070070.
[00:38:47] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Title 28A for the education statute is monstrous as well. So if you click on that and scroll down to subsection three, this is what the law states. It says each local agency. Well, in section 10. So 42.5, 6.010, it state, it defines what a local agency is.
And colloquially speaking, like I said, you could think of that as like a municipal corporation, like a city, a library district, a school district, anything like that, sheriff's office, whatever.
A state agency is very clearly defined, being different, that would be like the office of the governor, treasurer, et cetera.
So this matters because as it says here, each local agency will index A through F, so final opinions, policy interpretations, etc. If you scroll down to four, it says a local agency need not maintain this as long as they issue a resolution order, et cetera, that explains what their undue burdens are and the extent of the undue burdens. And that's in 4A.
This is the absolute crux. And I've got some recent.
I got some updates from just yesterday for you when we get to that point, N.J.
that is about the office of the Governor and proving that they are real time right now floundering in an effort to try to get out from underneath this, because I've got an inside source that is feeding me information by way of records that goes to show that Bobby knows what's going on and they're intentionally avoiding this. But in 4A, it says you have to specify the order with the reasons and the extent, not one, not One single local agency in the entire state of Washington has described the extent of the undue burdens. Until very recently, it was a couple of fire districts.
And they're completely incorrect, they're wrong, and they are literally lying on their orders by way of their fire commissioners.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: So let's. So I want to make sure that people are tracking here that this, this part of the public records request, this part of the law, basically, if we go back up here to three, to subsection three, it talks about how they should maintain an index. So describe for people just, you know, in plain lingo, I mean, like you showed at the healthcare authority, it's an index of certain things that should be made available to people.
Right. I mean, just kind of give, give this analysis a little bit so people can envision what we're talking about here.
[00:41:52] Speaker A: Sure. And I appreciate you asking that because I don't want this to sound condescending or, or rude or anything. So I'm just going to literally define an index because I think that's obviously important in this case. You know, an index is just a list of information that identifies usually, you know, by like maybe subject matter or a keyword or phrase, a title, what it is that you're looking for. And in this case, the categories, as you can see in A through F, are final opinions, including hearing and descending opinions, as well as orders in the adjudication of cases. So let me give you an example, because sometimes real world examples work. Just like when we were all taking algebra back in high school and people go, when am I going to use algebra? It makes no sense. Sometimes having real world examples helps. So with final opinions, as well as orders made in the adjudication of cases, think of perc, the Public Employment Relations Commission.
They make adjudications for employment all the time.
So, like, if you have a public employee that is disputing something about their employment, they can make a complaint. They can ask for an administrative hearing through the Office of Administrative Hearings to rule on whatever the issue is afoot.
That final opinion must be indexed, it must be published so that people can go and look it up and say, hey, look, you know, what's going on with this agency.
So that's one example. And then when you go to B, where it says statements of policy and interpretations of policy. So think about, let's say again, local agency, the mayor of a town issues a policy, let's say about maybe COVID 19, when that was happening. This is how the city of Wenatchee is going to enact the governor's executive order. So I'm going to make a policy statement regarding that enactment. Well, that has to be indexed.
Administrative staff manuals could be like the human resources manual I spoke about earlier. Planning policies and goals. That's pretty straightforward, right? I mean, look over at Spokane for example, with the freeway, the freeway connector going north. Right. That would be an example of planning policies and goals that need to be indexed so that the public can quickly go there and say what is current for this?
[00:44:29] Speaker B: Right.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: And then you've got correspondence, materials. So basically the correspondence and materials that you can see there relates exactly to what they list, regulatory, etc. Right. So all of these things combined are things that are the most salient and important to the citizens. They should be able to get to these and the examples I provided I think are salient examples that demonstrate these are real world impactful things that people need to be able to look to quickly.
And if you don't have this indexed, going back to that whole game that the public records officers play with clarification, they will just keep clarifying with you. Oh, staff manual. Hmm.
Yeah, gosh, I, I'm really gonna have to look around for that. I'll get back to you in a couple weeks.
Do you mean X, Y and Z?
Oh, no, I mean something else. Oh, give me a couple more weeks, I'll get back to you. And they just keep dragging it out forever where if you can go to the index and say it's called xyz, they can't play their game anymore and they have to provide these records quick.
[00:45:33] Speaker B: And you can see that this is, you know, a transparency tool.
[00:45:37] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:45:38] Speaker B: Because you know, they, like you've said, and I love that you say this, you know, they are employees of ours, of our, of us, the citizens. They're supposed to be working on our behalf. They're supposed to be transparent. Right. About all of this information.
So you shouldn't have to go digging for it. So here it is, here's our law. And I've, I've posted this. I'm not quite sure where it's posting to right now. It might only be posting on X, but a link to this.
But basically, again, you can just search for RCW 42.56 and that takes you to the public records request. And what section are we in again?
[00:46:18] Speaker A: 70.
[00:46:19] Speaker B: 70. So 70 070. And it says right here that each local agency shall maintain and make available for public inspection and copying a current index. Right. And so that, and it's an index, as you saw in that video that we showed just a little bit. I mean, the healthcare authorities index was very, very thick. So you're going to have, you know, the itemized information easily accessible and then it's probably referencing documents later on in the index. Right.
So this is, this is so important for people to understand. Now clarify for me this point in the subsection three, each local agency. So you're, you're making reference to state agency. So does this statute under 3 also include state agency in this?
[00:47:15] Speaker A: No. If you scroll down to subsection five, it then says each state agency shall by rule do the following, which is A through E.
There we go.
[00:47:24] Speaker B: So right there. So whether it's a local agency or a state agency, they need to be following these things unless they have this.
[00:47:36] Speaker A: Exemption, which is only for local agencies.
[00:47:40] Speaker B: Which is only for local agencies. And if they don't have it, they are supposed to issue and publish a formal order specifying the reason, the specific reason. So this, this is true of every single governmental agency in our state. This is so important.
I mean, you know, and what's awesome about you sharing this information today, Steve, is. Who knows who's listening, like Tracy Abdul on Facebook right now, who just shared some information. I'm going to share if I can get over here. Hold on just a second. Her comment. So I. Because I don't know if you can see it.
Thanks for commenting, Tracy. By the way, we had a school district keep a FOIA request going for months so they could continue the false narrative. The community abuse against an elected official could have been stopped, but the district hit it. She resigned. We just found out they had all the information for months.
So there you go.
So talk about that a little bit.
[00:48:40] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and this is perfect because actually I know you're over in the Spokane area.
There is with West Valley. I believe it's West Valley.
The public records officer is Sabre Doll and she is a villainous public records officer. Straight up villainous. She was playing games for months regarding records that I was seeking. And at the time I was not aware of. Of the records index. But in looking at it now, it makes it clear that if I had had the index, I would have been able to ask exactly for the records because she was playing games with me. With like, what do you mean? I don't know. And it went on for months with her. Now, to her credit as a villain, she's very good at being a villain as a public records officer. But that being said, what I did is I actually hired a person because I knew I couldn't get There in time, I hired a person to go in, a courier and on video to request the Public Records Index. The week before, they were scheduled to have a public meeting to exempt themselves from the records index. So technically, I've got it on video.
This individual requested the Public Records Index before they had a resolution, which means they're required to have that index, which means they violated the Records Act. And then the week after that, they passed a resolution from the school board that says they're exempting themselves. But guess what they didn't do. They didn't describe the extent of the undue burden. And the whole point of that is to basically implement the will of the legislature, which was to say it's fine if you want to exempt yourselves, but you need to prove that it's truly an undo burden. You can't just say it's too much work. You have to prove it's too much work.
[00:50:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:50:40] Speaker A: And with the exception of two fire districts recently and one sewer district, not a single agency in the state of Washington's in compliance.
[00:50:49] Speaker B: Wow, this is amazing. And again, you know, like, I've. I've been on the other end of this, I'll be honest. I've been a school board member, school board director, and I've been on the state Board of Education. So we've. I've been on the receiving side of these public records requests, and when they really started, I mean, it can be. It can be costly to the district. Right.
We're not trying. I don't.
This is not trying to abuse the system and cause undue cost and stress. This is just telling. I mean, these are laws that have been passed by the lawmakers in our state to ensure that we have transparency of our government that is supposed to be working for us and transparency in our policies and stuff. This is, you know, this is not frivolous. Right. And I get it. It can be hard because it can take some time by these agencies to produce these documents. But this is law.
This is. This is law.
[00:51:48] Speaker A: Correct. And the irony.
The irony is you make a really good point when you say it can be costly.
Well, the. The sharp irony here is if, let's say, and we know that citizens request the things that are listed in the records index frequently. Right. Like during COVID people were requesting everything about COVID whether it's policy statements, interpretive statements, executive orders, final orders, declaratory orders, whatever.
And they were doing that at a state and local level.
Now, if agencies indexed all of those things, which are required by statute, and they could do exactly What I did with the Washington State Healthcare authority, as you saw on video, I got my records request done in 10 minutes.
[00:52:37] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:52:38] Speaker A: If you could get records requests done in less than 10 minutes by publishing the index online so people can go through it and just download a PDF and print it out themselves, you are literally having a zero amount of time committed to those particular requests.
[00:52:55] Speaker B: So it's a cost saving practice.
[00:52:57] Speaker A: It's a cost saver. And so here's the. Yeah, the sharp irony is not only does it increase efficacy in our government, but in a, at a point in time in our economic history of Washington state that were 16 billion in debt, Bobby and his gang of goons could actually implement this records index to its fullest degree, as could local government and actually decrease their budget.
They could reduce the amount of staff that they need in the public records department, save money and actually get the job done quicker if they just followed the law. But in this case they're like, nah, we're not interested.
[00:53:40] Speaker B: We don't like government efficiency. Is that a thing?
We need to bring that back? No, exactly. It does. It will save time and it will save, you know, people from having to fish around like, you know, like you're talking about, sometimes people want information, but they don't know exactly the terminology, what to call things. And so it takes some time, right, to, to, you know, maybe that back and forth. I mean, think about the time that that takes from that agency, whether it's a local or a statewide agency, to, you know, spend with that person trying to make that public records request. Now I have a question for you because you talked about the two year thing and I'm curious, is this a thing? Right? Is this, do you, what is the limit of time that a public agency can take to fulfill these records requests?
This is getting outside of the index a little bit.
[00:54:40] Speaker A: But no, no, that's totally fine actually, because I mean really what this is all about is just getting transparency in our government through the Records Act. So it doesn't have to just be about the index at all, by any means.
Happy to field any and all these questions because I want, I want citizens to be more aware of what all this means and how to actually utilize it so we can force them to do what they're supposed to do, which is work for us.
So the time limit is there is none.
That's, that's the really horrible part here.
Time limits in the Public Records act are pretty limited. So if you go to section 520 of the Public Records act, it gives a timeline which says after you submit a request, they have to respond to the request within five business days.
After that, installments can be provided. Now, there is an important case in Washington state called Beal B E A L.
And that case, I think that was from 2004, if I remember correctly.
That case, it was Beale versus the city of Seattle.
Actually, no, I don't think it was 2000. I think it was 2009. Anyways, in Beale versus the city of Seattle, there was a controversy regarding how frequent the installments were coming.
And Beal felt it should have been like every day or every couple days or every week or something like that.
And the city of Seattle was providing installments every 30 days.
And so in that ruling, the Washington State appellate court said, actually, 30 days is okay.
That's the extent of the time frame. There is no end amount of time. So, like, let's say you just request, I don't know, whatever you request, and they say, okay, it looks like it'll take probably 12 installments.
The only guidance we have by case law at this point, because there's nothing in statute, is 30 days is reasonable for an installment, but it doesn't tell you how many installments are reasonable or.
[00:56:55] Speaker B: How long you have to. Exactly right.
[00:56:59] Speaker A: So the. The gamesmanship that's played by these villainous public records officers and their managers is they'll look at the case law and say, okay, well, it's 30 days max on installment is what the Beal case gives guidance on in terms of, you know, a period of time. But, hey, let's drag it out for 75 installments.
[00:57:22] Speaker B: Well, and you. And you made a great point at the beginning of this conversation, is that you have found that they will even game that a little bit and maybe save some of the most, you know, diabolical or the. The worst of the worst or, you know, the most transparent stuff that you're actually looking for for the end, right? Like just kind of trying to wait you out.
[00:57:47] Speaker A: That's exactly what they do. And there's a litany of reasons as to why they do that. One, the government doesn't like to be told what to do, even though they should, because they work for us, but they don't like to be told what to do.
And B, there are timelines associated with certain things. So if you have evidence that some civil injury has occurred to you and you want to implement your Seventh Amendment to bring a lawsuit against an agency, you have to do it within a certain period of time. Right. There's a statute of limitations.
Well, if they can ensure that they drag out those installments for five years and the statute of limitations is three, by the time you get the evidence that there is something here, you're two years past it.
[00:58:36] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:58:37] Speaker A: So it's a way for them to avoid liability as well for different agencies.
[00:58:42] Speaker B: Yeah, that almost goes back to Tracy's point, the comment that we shared a little earlier, you know, where they ended up kind of doing that exact same thing and it caused a school district, an elected official to resign or maybe, you know, finish their term before stuff could be exposed.
[00:59:04] Speaker A: Exactly. And so the index, again, circling back to the value of that is you can quickly see, based on what I had just said a moment ago, that the index would allow you to get to the salient documents you need, whether it be a local or state agency, and quickly get that like right now. So instead of them saying, well, you know, we searched and there's so like a common thing. I don't want to go too far in the weeds on this unless you tell me to and I can. But one of the, they, they have tools, basically Shepardizing software tools that they have at agencies.
And what they do is they search all of their records electronically by keywords and phrases. And then what will commonly happen And Auburn School district did this to me regarding the oil spill. They come back and say, well, there's, you know, 40,372 records.
If we produce all of them, it will take us 23 years and we'll put, we'll do those in installments every 30 days.
So of course, out of all that, you don't know what you don't know to quote Donald Rumsfeld and can't be aware of whether a, what you're really looking forward is in there. And also there's nothing to control them releasing the salient things early.
They can just put that on the back of a 23 year release time.
So the index would allow you to go and say, oh, actually the documents I'm looking for A, B and C here. So I'm just going to request those three things which should take you about a week.
They don't want that because if you can get those documents in a week, they're hosed.
[01:00:47] Speaker B: Right. What, when was this index put into law as a requirement?
[01:00:53] Speaker A: So the, the session laws show it was being debated in 1972 or. I'm sorry, that was an initiative. Apologies. It was implemented in, on January 1, 1973. And then there were two changes to the Records act requested regarding the end or one change to The Records act regarding the index. And that was in the session laws in 1989, which was implemented July 1, 1990. And that's when they delineated between local and state agencies. And then at that point in time said, hey, state agencies, if you don't have an index, fair enough, but you got to have one now. It's going to happen. You're going to do it. And you know, the executive branch is like, if, by mean, if you mean have an index, you mean not to have an index. We will in fact do that. But it goes even further that the office of the Code Reviser, in concert in conspiracy with the Washington State Department of Transportation, Employment Security Department and the Office of the Governor actively broke the law, as far as I can tell, by illegally maintaining an administrative code for each one of those agencies that completely contradicts state law.
So to give you a hyperbolic example, we know that murder is illegal, of course, in Washington state and federal, but we'll just take the murder statute for Washington State. You can't murder somebody. We all know this. But imagine if they passed an administrative code for the office of the governor, said, except for the governor on Thursdays, he can go murder people on Thursdays, totally fine. You're like, well, no, yeah, actually you can't do that. It's. There's the law.
Nah, it's all right. I'll just get the office of the code revisor to just, you know, alter the administrative code to make Thursdays free murder day for Bobby.
You can't do that. Right. Because state statute trumps administrative code. You can't just make up stuff like that. But they did.
[01:03:00] Speaker B: And so it's an absurd example, obviously. But the point being is that this is in essence what they're doing. They're doing it right now in, in almost every state agency.
[01:03:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And in fact, what I want to show you, I'm going to send you a link here because I, I want people to see this and know that I'm not just picking something up here because it sounds so incredible that you're just like, I just don't think this is real, Steve. And you're like, well, it, it really is that real? Here's this link.
So that link that I sent in private chat to you, mj, or I could present it if you want.
[01:03:43] Speaker B: I got it.
[01:03:44] Speaker A: Okay.
So I want to go back and explain briefly the difference between statute and administrative code so everyone watching can, can know why this is important.
Statute is a law.
Administrative code is a rule or a code that instructs that agency on how they are to manage the law. So the law says you need to do X. This is how we're going to actually managerially do it.
Now this is where it gets crazy. So this is the administrative code for the office of the governor. So WAC 240.
[01:04:20] Speaker B: Yep. So remind everybody, you've got law, you've got RCW, which is the, the basis, the foundation, and then you've got code, which are the wax that that has to operate within the limits or the confines of the RCW or the laws, correct?
[01:04:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
So it's a rule, basically.
It instructs that agency how it is to administer the law.
So the law says you're going to do public records. And then the administrative code here, the governor's administrative code says, here's how you're specifically going to implement or administer state laws that relates to the office of the Governor.
Now what's crazy here when you look at this is it says exemption from requirement to maintain a current records index.
But hold on a minute. We just went over the state statute that says state agencies can't exempt themselves. And this is the office of the Governor.
So you're like, how, how are you doing that? Well, if you go to the bottom there, where it says Order 73, 1, Statute 246, 130, filed August 31, 1973, Governor Evans exempted the office of the governor on August 31, 1973, which.
No, no, he did it legally. He did it legally because remember, back then, they didn't delineate between local and state agencies.
[01:05:48] Speaker B: Oh, oh.
[01:05:49] Speaker A: But 1990, July 1st, when the, when the Public Records act was updated, they, they defined what a local and estate agency is. And then that update to the state law said if you're a state agency, you must now from this point forward, create and maintain an index. However, when you look at this, that's the last time this was updated, 1973.
So the governor has been out of compliance since July 1, 1990, for 35 years.
And then going to the stories that I did, I was working on some other stories regarding the office of the Governor regarding Covid, ironically, like some labor and industry stuff, which I can address that if you want, but basically that's why I was going there and I said, hey, I need to find certain documents, but I don't know what they're called yet, which is why I need to look at the index so I can figure out what that is and then I'll make that request.
And they provided to me on video a the exemption. They said, yeah, well, the office of the Governor's is exempt.
And I said, well, you can't exempt yourself. Here's the state I already had with me printed out physically in person. I had the state law published. And I saw. I was like, this is what it says right here. So how did you do that? Because you're breaking the law right now.
And she's like, well, no, we're exempt because we're not a state agency. I said, hold on a minute. You're telling me the office of the Governor of Washington State is not a state agency? To which she responds and says, exactly. And I said, well, then how come RCW4256 subsection or section 10 defines the Office of the Governor as a state agency specifically?
She goes, well, that's just what we have is an exemption. Then she walks away.
And I've been continuously publishing these stories where I go back to confront them. I call them out for lying, I call them out for all manner of shenanigans. And now what I mentioned earlier when I said, I've got some recent updates.
I've got emails from the Office of the Governor where they're talking about things internally and they're saying this, you know, this journalist is coming in and he's addressing these issues.
And, you know, it looks like we actually have to have an index, but we've been exempt. Well, now they're.
The most recent time I went in, they produced a false index.
[01:08:32] Speaker B: A false.
[01:08:34] Speaker A: A false index. So they literally falsified a record by creating a fake record just for me.
They admit it in the email. They created an index that is not an index just for auditors.
Literally.
[01:08:53] Speaker B: And how is it not an index? How is it false?
[01:08:57] Speaker A: Great question.
[01:08:58] Speaker B: So this is what the emails.
[01:09:01] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[01:09:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:09:02] Speaker B: You assigning a. A label as false. This is them themselves in the emails describing them. Creating this.
[01:09:12] Speaker A: Yes. Just for auditors.
Just for auditors. And so what it. What it was is when I went in the last time, in fact, again, I know everybody's watching this, so let me see if I can pull up.
No, it's not that one. I think it's the top one. The most re. Yeah. Okay, there it is. If you go to the top link in that private chat.
[01:09:43] Speaker B: All right, let me get back over there. It's not the one I queued up, is it? The governor breaks state law. Okay.
[01:09:49] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. Governor break state law. That is the one. Yeah.
[01:09:51] Speaker B: Okay, hold on. Let me get over there.
Share this tab. So and everybody that's watching you can go to I am auditing. Tell them your YouTube where they can find you on YouTube.
[01:10:05] Speaker A: Yeah, if you just search inland auditing media.
[01:10:08] Speaker B: Okay. And then also on X, your. What's your handle at?
[01:10:12] Speaker A: I am free Auditing.
[01:10:14] Speaker B: Okay. And we'll. We'll share that too. It's in the description as well to the video. So. All right. I think this is the right one. Does that look right?
[01:10:24] Speaker A: Hold on just a second here.
Yes, that's the one. And if you go to.
The timestamp is 10 minutes and 39. Let's see.
I think 10:34 with the law.
[01:10:45] Speaker C: That's why you've produced all of those four elements that are required to be produced. For those of you new to my channel, my focus on government transparency. In Washington State there is a tool called the Public Records Index, which for state agencies is mandatory to have inspectable. It is not something that is requested through the typical processes of making a records request. It is instead a tool meant to aid someone in making a public records request. This is found, as you can see here in the Revised Codes of Washington, Title 42, Chapter 56, Section 70, Subsection 5. It requires, as you can see, the following documents be indexed for quick reference by the public to get exactly what they are looking for.
One, final orders, two, declaratory orders, three, interpretive statements, and four, policy statements. As you can see here, by this large.3 ring binder. They have the history and letters and documents of the former governors, but they are not final orders, declaratory orders, interpretive statements or policy statements.
[01:11:44] Speaker A: Can you pause it real quick?
[01:11:45] Speaker C: So where can I find the Office of Governors, which now it seems like we're on the same page, that the office of the Governor is a state agency.
[01:11:52] Speaker B: The paper that I've already given you does exempt our office because we're an office, not an agency.
[01:12:05] Speaker C: Where would I find the decks for this state agency?
On the office of the Governor now saying in order for me to get access to the index, I need to submit a public records request for that. Are you sure?
[01:12:24] Speaker A: By the way, who. Who are you?
[01:12:26] Speaker C: Who are you?
[01:12:27] Speaker B: I'm a public records Aiden.
[01:12:28] Speaker C: Okay, great. Now, Ashley here, as can be seen and heard from November 20, 2024, had all manner of comments and input to provide to the public regarding public records and the Public Records Act. However, now that I am asking for a clarification regarding the Public Records act and Index, Ashley clarified that I needed to put in a request for the Public Records Index.
Where would I find the Index for this state agency.
Yet just moments before she told me to reference the large three ring binder saying that that was the index as seen here.
So to Ashley, Catherine, Leathers and Bobby, which one is it? Is it the records index or not? Ashley said it was, yet now she is saying it is not that I need to request it. It's all quite confusing. Yet the Washington State Healthcare Authority seems.
[01:13:26] Speaker A: To have it down pat.
[01:13:28] Speaker C: That's a little embarrassing since the governor oversees the Washington State Healthcare Authority.
Seems like more lying is afoot here in the office of the governor, which by the way, I just want to remind everyone it is a state agency and not just an office.
[01:13:43] Speaker A: The paper that I've already given you.
[01:13:45] Speaker B: Does exempt our office because we're an office, not an agency, which was a state, which was.
[01:13:57] Speaker C: Yeah, I would probably start using your fifth amendment too. That's probably so.
[01:14:01] Speaker B: And we, we can't hear what she says there, Steve. So what is she saying?
Oh, you're on mute.
[01:14:11] Speaker A: Oops, sorry.
[01:14:13] Speaker B: You're on mute.
[01:14:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Can you hear me?
Okay, so yeah, on November 20, 2024, she said we're an office, not an agency. And then right here when I said so, I just want to make sure you understand you're an office and a state agency. And she says, yeah, that was a mistake.
[01:14:28] Speaker B: It's like, okay, well we can't on this.
[01:14:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it's hard because they got the bulletproof glass up there for the governor's office. But that, that three ring binder that you just saw, all that is, is the letters of every governor, including the territorial governors of Washington state. That's all it is.
It's like 350 pages of just letters. That's all it is.
[01:14:53] Speaker B: There's not an order, it's not complying, it's not truly the index as in statute stated in statute of these declaratory statements, policy statements, those kind of things.
[01:15:06] Speaker A: Correct. And this is where I get to the felonies.
So if you go, I'm going to pull this up here. It's RCW 40001610 and that statute is titled Injury to Public Record.
And I'm going to share this link to you here.
That's the most recent one I just shared in private chat.
That statute criminalizes what you just witnessed. What you just saw Ashley do was a felony.
So when she said that's the Public Records Index.
Well, no, it's not. You're concealing the Real Records Index that you don't actually have. Because when you read this, it says every person who shall willfully and unlawfully remove, alter, mutilate, destroy, conceal, commits a.
[01:15:58] Speaker B: Felony now and describe for people a class C felony, because, you know, maybe some of us don't operate in that. I mean, what is that equal to?
[01:16:10] Speaker A: Yeah, so there's three levels of felonies in Washington State. A class C felony is punishable BY up to five years in prison and up to, I think, $1,000 fine. A class B felony is punishable by up to 10 years in prison with I think, a $5,000 fine. And a class A felony, the most serious, like murder, that kind of stuff that is punishable by up to life in prison.
[01:16:37] Speaker B: And it's significant. I mean, it is five years felony is not something to, you know, ignore.
[01:16:45] Speaker A: No, it's definitely not. And the, the thing that I was talking about where, I mean, obviously I just said what I said, but when I said earlier that there's internal emails where they're talking about making a.
Making a records index just for auditors.
Trying to pull that up here real quick.
[01:17:14] Speaker B: Wow, this is crazy.
[01:17:15] Speaker A: Well, anyways, yeah, so I won't go digging through that, but the idea here is that I've got an email that says, we've created this just for auditors. So what they're doing is they're knowingly saying we're not creating an index based on statute, which is a requirement for us for Washington state.
We're going to create this one for auditors because they're the ones coming in asking for it. And since they are, and we have, we haven't put together the actual index yet, which we're required to do, we're just going to put this out there as a false flag that is, in effect, concealing the record. What they should do is, is actually come out just like the office of Minority Women's Business Enterprises.
They admitted on camera their chief operating officer said, we don't have one. We're working on making one right now. The reason they don't want to say that is because the moment the state agency says on camera, we don't have it, we're working on creating it, they've admitted to breaking the law.
Bobby cannot fathom admitting that he has broken the law. And if you go to the office of the governor and they say to you, we don't have one, but we're working on it, then your cause for action in civil court to bring suit against the office of the governor for violating the Public records Act for 35 years is guaranteed.
And, and that's what's happening. Here they're avoiding that admission because what they want to do, because I do have a lawyer that I'm talking to about suing the office of the Governor at this point.
What they don't want to do is just basically have an open and shut case. What they want to do is drag this out for years in the hopes that they can come into compliance beforehand. Because there is a case. There's another Supreme Court case in Washington state that says, I think it's Cantu versus Yakima, but either way, it says if they produce the records, they're no longer in violation.
So this is all about the Administrative Procedures act of Washington State and them using it to come into compliance before they get sued.
[01:19:28] Speaker B: Right.
[01:19:28] Speaker A: They're desperate to do that right now.
[01:19:30] Speaker B: This is just amazing. I mean, it's just amazing to me. It's kind of like mind boggling that this has been going on for 35 years.
[01:19:42] Speaker A: Yeah. For the office of the Governor. Now, if you really want to go for some wholesale insanity.
The video of me with the treasurer, it's. This is the treasurer one.
I sat down and interviewed the chief legal counsel for Washington State Treasurer, Mike Pelliciati. Her name is Devin Phelps.
Really cool. I know Devin probably isn't my number one fan, but she did have the courage to sit down with me and I applaud her for that.
She had the courage to sit down with me and she gave me about a 20 minute interview and I did mop the floor with the office of the Treasurer in that interview. But regardless, she had the courage to actually have the interview.
And I proved to her in the interview that they've been out of compliance for 53 years.
53 years.
[01:20:39] Speaker B: And this is the Department of Treasury.
Wow.
And what is this binder that you're showing right here on the screen?
[01:20:52] Speaker A: Let me look at that. Hold on. Okay, that. That was from earlier when I showed that clip of me going into the Healthcare Authority.
[01:20:59] Speaker B: Okay. So that just happened. And that's where it was queued up for me. Okay. All right. So that's the good example of what it should look like. And then you're probably comparing it with what the Department of Treasury doesn't have. Right?
[01:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah. So when I went in. So the Office of the Governor exempted itself lawfully back in 1973, August 31, as you saw from the administrative code for the office of the Governor, the Office of the Treasurer never exempted itself.
Now, it could have for the first 17 years.
Right. But it didn't. So when I confronted Devin in that interview. And I said to her, and I'll give you the timestamp because it is savage when I confronted about it. And I said, well, in effect, what you're saying to me is the office of the Governor has been out of compliance with the Public Records act for over a half a century.
And you can see on her face that look of like, I'm screwed. I got no way out of this. I don't know what to do here.
And then she says something to the effect of, well, when you put it like that.
Let me get you the timestamp because it's worth seeing. This is what Bobby Ferguson and his folks are trying to avoid. So if you go to 28 minutes and four seconds, you'll very much enjoy what you're about to see here because this is a major executive office in the Washington state government getting wrecked and owned on. On camera.
[01:22:40] Speaker C: There's a misunderstanding or disagreement as to compliance, transparency and publishing of the Records Index. How come the state Treasurer's office never made an update or even acknowledged the change in the session laws from 1989 to update formally in 1990?
[01:23:00] Speaker A: July 1st.
[01:23:01] Speaker C: At this point, basically the. Seems the treasurer just hasn't been in.
[01:23:05] Speaker A: Compliance for 50 years.
[01:23:08] Speaker B: When you say it that way, again, I cannot speak for anyone who was previously here. So I. I don't know.
[01:23:28] Speaker A: So as you can see, she had no response. There is no. She's going to the. I don't know what happened before, but it's like, it doesn't matter. You're the chief legal counsel.
You're the head attorney for the Washington State Treasurer. You've got no answer to this.
There is no answer to this because you've been out of compliance for 53 years.
And she's trying to make it. Well, it's not me. It was my predecessors. Like, that's not how it works. There's continuity of government.
And so this is the proof of the extent of this malady. And what they're trying to avoid now are criminal charges. I think. I think they're trying to avoid the civil consequences. Because of course, now the Records Index has never been dealt with in court in Washington State, ever. It's never, never been at the center of any court case hearing, nothing.
So the real question here is, what's the liability?
Because with the Public Records act, the liability can be up to $100 per page, per day.
So if an agency.
[01:24:34] Speaker B: Wow.
[01:24:35] Speaker A: And I'll just say King county, if somebody were to not produce the records for a protracted period of time, and there was evidence like, yeah, King county for not producing those records for enormous amounts of time.
Judges have the ability to levy a hundred dollars per page per day fine. And if you just say, let's say, you know, 20 pages, that's $2,000 a day and for a year that's $730,000 if they max the fines. Now let's take that times 53 or actually 50, that's 36 and a half million dollars just for one agency for 20 pages.
[01:25:22] Speaker B: You know, it's amazing, again, since I've been an elected official, I mean, we get drilled into us the. Which is rightfully so. Right. I'm not complaining. We get drilled into us about the Open Public Meetings act and the stuff that we have to do to make sure that we are in compliance and that we don't have, you know, we're not doing business through emails or, you know, on a, on a school board of five people.
You know, if there was three of us, it was a, it was a meeting. Right. We had quorum and so you had to do things about being transparent about. Yes, all board members are going to be at this event. There's no meeting. You know, there's, there's things you have to do. Like, I mean, you know, again, we got drilled into us the things that we had to be careful of and we had to do and not do business or emails, you know, more than two people, those kind of things, or any business. But I mean, be careful of any emails. You couldn't have more than two board members on.
I mean, just the, the monotony of, of these laws and, and stuff that we're so careful of. And yet here we have a whole section of law that is being completely ignored.
[01:26:42] Speaker A: Yeah, potentially to great cost because the example I just gave you there is a lot less than, for example, the healthcare authority. If you go off the Healthcare Authority 700 page index that you just saw there, you times that by a hundred dollars per page per day, times 365, times 35, that's $894 million.
[01:27:03] Speaker B: If you've got max fine, one agency, one agency, you start thinking about the multiple agencies or offices, whatever you want to call them, you know, that are not in compliance billions of dollars.
[01:27:17] Speaker A: Now, of course, I want to clarify that that's maximum fines. So remember, everyone that's paying attention in Washington state, our judges are elected officials. Even at the Supreme Court. In no universe, in no universe would you ever see the Supreme Court of Washington State issue maximum fines to a detrimental level against the state government, even in the best of times, especially in a $16 billion deficit. Time.
[01:27:46] Speaker B: Well, but you know, sometimes they do do that to make to. To cause a change.
You know, when you have a repeat offender, which is what you have here for 35 years plus.
I agree with you, like I agree with your assessment that's unlikely to happen. But here you have a. A willfully unlawful trend, to say the least, happening continuing to happen for 35 years. Now, obviously you're doing what you can do to make this known to them and that may be causing some changes, right?
[01:28:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it is. I think they're obviously aware of it. The changes that are happening right now are really just in the background. So I mentioned the office of the code revisor earlier.
To change an administrative code takes quite a bit of work.
A swift turnaround time is typically considered about 8 to 12 months. If you're trying to make substantial changes, it's usually about two years.
And I think what they're trying to do at this point is delay, which is what they're doing, putting out fake stuff like the letters of the governor and lying about it, saying that that's the index when we all know it's not.
They're just delaying so they can get the administrative code updated and get all of the records indexed.
Now, one of the emails I received also recently, this two days ago, is that the office of the governor. I'm not kidding you, the office of the governor issued this in a public records request to. To my source, an email response that said the office of the governor of Washington state does not have any final orders, declaratory orders, interpretive statements or policy statements. So there's nothing to index.
Yeah, no policy statements. Like, let's just take again Covid.
What's the odds that there's no final orders regarding Covid? No policy statements regarding Covid, no interpretive statements regarding Covid. I'm going to go with the number 0%.
And that's where they're at, is they're so willing to just lie. And the problem here becomes how do you deal with that? Well, Nick Brown would never issue criminal charges against pretty much anyone in the government. He'd watch his own children die in a fire before he would do something like that. Because he is just that kind of a corrupt, you know, politician. He is just terrible.
And I think the issue here becomes the only way to solve this at a state level is to which I'm thinking about doing, is to just go to the FBI and ask them to open up a criminal corruption case. Because at the point where you can say, based on that statute, I shared RCW 40.16010 injury to public record. At the point where you have their own internal emails stating, hey, we're going to create an index just for these people. And it's not actually an index. You're concealing.
Yeah, the actual record, that's a felony. And if, you know Nick Brown's not going to actually issue criminal charges when he knows that he should because that's conspiracy and corruption, then the only place to turn to at that point is the federal government to say, can't. You don't have jurisdiction on the state level laws, but you do have jurisdiction on corruption.
And I think this is a case where Bobby needs to be arrested.
I think, I don't think Nick Brown needs to. I think he's young, he's not a particularly talented attorney. So he's probably just in way over his head. He's probably not actually understanding what's going on here. But Bobby does.
And Jay knew what he was doing too.
[01:31:59] Speaker B: So you dealt with, let's talk about that a little bit because you dealt with the, you know, you're talking about Ferguson when he was attorney general. For how many years was he attorney general?
[01:32:11] Speaker A: 12.
[01:32:12] Speaker B: Okay, so 12. You had Inslee, who was governor for 12 years. And so you were dealing with this then. I mean, this is, so this is not new. This is, you were dealing with the old administration, you know, and these mishaps and these not following these policies back then. So like you said, Ferguson knows this. I mean, he's.
This is not new information.
[01:32:41] Speaker A: Correct. And I think that's all part and parcel of why they're putting up these delay stall tactics while they're looking to change administrative code and create the index because they know they've got a safety net with Nick. Because Nick, like I said, you know, Bobby could commit crimes live streaming and Nick would not arrest him.
So the only option here is to have the federal government exercise its jurisdiction through federal charges of corruption and conspiracy to hold the state government to account since they don't have jurisdiction over state laws.
[01:33:18] Speaker B: Right.
[01:33:19] Speaker A: And that goes back to like you were saying, Bobby when he was Attorney General was the one providing legal advice to Jay Inslee regarding this very issue. So now there's no way to avoid the culpability here and the complicitness and law breaking when the former Attorney general who's giving advice to Jay now becomes the governor.
He himself is personally aware of this and was giving Legal advice regarding it.
[01:33:48] Speaker B: Right.
You know, and what's interesting to me, again, when I was on the State Board of Education, I remember they're. They're having new training, I think, that came out of the AG's office for elected officials that you had to go through. So they issued. And you, Steve, you and I have talked about this before. There's been directives, you know, that have been issued either from the Attorney General's office. I think that's kind of where we talked about dealing with public. Public records requests, probably because of the work you've done and the pressure that's been put on. So. So they've, you know, put out information on how to deal with things or put out trainings on how to make sure they're complying with the law on some laws.
Right. But they didn't on this.
Correct.
Am I assessing this correctly?
[01:34:42] Speaker A: That's correct, yeah. And it's because you have to consider the enormity of the work here. Now, I don't know how the Health Care authority actually got that done as quickly as they did. I mean, I'm mystified and happy.
I mean, that's amazing. I just am shocked. But I think, you know, the health care authorities are way newer because, remember, before the Health Care Authority was just called the department, Department of Health.
And I think it's probably, even though healthcare authority has a ton of records, I think it's probably way quicker for the Healthcare authority, since they're a newer agency, to. To scramble and get together the index. And it would be the office of the Governor, because the office of the Governor has to go back at least in 1990.
[01:35:30] Speaker B: And even if they showed they, you know, I, I would think, who knows? I mean, I'm not a judge. But even if they could show that they're working on it and, and working to at least get current right now with the current administration, I mean, that would be a huge step in the right direction. Nobody. I mean, you can't expect somebody to just snap their fingers and it all be there all of a sudden from the last 35 years. Right?
[01:35:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. I. I mean, to some extent, you are definitely correct.
But the, the issue is like House of Severe, this Records act violation is this goes back to Governor Gregoire all the way up through Bobby. And when you look at, I mean, when in section 580 of the Public Records act, that. That section discusses public records officers and it lays out the training they're supposed to receive, mandatory training that public records officers supposed to be Received.
Those public records officers are certified in all of their knowledge.
So when you become a public records officer, you are certified to know all the ins and outs of the entire Records Act. How is it that you can be certified to know everything in the Records act, yet section 70 is somehow mystically avoided? Well, the answer is obvious. It's because it goes back to accountability.
This tool, meant to aid a person in making records request, produces the greatest amount of accountability in the entire Records act because those documents, based on the legislature's intent, were deemed to be the most important and salient for the citizens of the state to be aware of instantly on demand.
And they have. There's no way that every public records officer since 1990 has somehow just missed that section. Just missed that? Yeah. Every single state agency in the entire State for 35 years at a minimum has somehow just not been aware of this. I don't. I mean, are they illiterate? Can they not read? Do they.
You know what's going on here? And that's the problem is, like, it gets to a point where the evidence is so mountainous.
[01:37:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:37:59] Speaker A: You look at this and you realize this is just absurd. It's not because there is an excuse. There is no excuse. You can't excuse away every executive branch agency for 35 years and say it was just a mistake. Now, could you for maybe, like the Office of Administrative Hearing.
Sure. It's one agency.
It doesn't excuse them for violating the act. But by the way, the office Administrative Hearing does have their index as well. But could you. Could. Could you find randomly one. One agency has been poorly administered for 35 years? Sure.
Every single executive agency. No.
[01:38:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:38:39] Speaker A: Now, this is done with intent. This is. This is done to weaponize the Records act against the citizens, to confound their ability to hold their government to account through swift, efficacious transparency.
[01:38:53] Speaker B: So Tracy commented there's a court date going on suing Bob Ferguson to have him recalled.
And then she adds court this month. You should add these charges. So I wanted to make sure to share that.
[01:39:04] Speaker A: Oh, that's. That's a really great point. Yeah, I was aware that there. This recall stuff is going on.
One of the things that I think you might find interesting, too, mj, as I've been calling around for attorneys for the last year, maybe a little bit more.
Over a hundred attorneys, not one of them, except for the one that I've been speaking with recently, who is an absolute court wizard.
I don't want to mention her name yet, though, because I haven't officially Retained her for this, but not one lawyer outside of that individual I've been speaking to recently.
Been willing to take this for a couple of reasons. One, they said there was about 15 of them, said they don't want to lose their legal career. They said, yep. They fear that the state will go through every single record they've ever submitted and find a, quote, perjury charge on them or something, even though it was inadvertent, something on any statement anywhere and say, oh, now that this is done, we're going to go to the office of Defense Counsel for the Washington State Bar association and have you lose your license, just like Shannon McMinnamy lost her license here recently.
[01:40:14] Speaker B: And who's that?
[01:40:16] Speaker A: So Shannon McMinnamy is the insane former general legal counsel for the Bellevue School District who was the president of the John Brown Gun Club of the Puget Sound and also their legal counsel and an avid supporter of villain Van Spronson, the domestic terrorist that attempted to blow up by firebombing the ICE immigration center in Tacoma back in 2021.
[01:40:48] Speaker B: And you have, you have some videos on this, by the way, so people can. Oh, yeah, and dig into that a little bit more. It's pretty fascinating.
[01:40:55] Speaker A: Yeah, there's. There's three, three or four stories on her. But the idea here with her losing her law license is those lawyers I was speaking to about trying to bring suit against the office of the governor, that was. They were saying, like, look, they're gonna find something, not because I'm a criminal, but because people make mistakes and they'll just max those charges.
And all of a sudden you've lost your law license, you can't practice, you've lost your business, you may go to jail. You know, so they're like, I'm. It's just not worth it. They're like, I'm not interested in doing it. The other response was they're going to empty the Attorney General's office out on me. They're going to put every lawyer on this, and they are going to make this drag out for a hundred years.
[01:41:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:41:42] Speaker A: And they, they just said, you know, it's. That is just. That kind of a fight's not worth it for me. So what I've been looking for is an attorney that, you know, is willing to have that level of fight, because while this isn't in the weeds records acting, it's. It definitely does not have sex appeal. Like, let's say the governor was caught murdering somebody. Right. Very salacious. Very like, oh, my gosh, that's Top shelf bad.
Nobody wakes up and goes, I'm gonna dig into the Records act today and out figure, figured out if I can find some detailed thing they've been violating for 50 years said nobody ever.
But as a journalist, by way of discovering this, because of trying to do open government transparency stories, this is what has come about.
And I think in this case that's why these attorneys are saying it's going to get ugly if I take the case and I'm not going to take it.
[01:42:37] Speaker B: So this gets to the approaches. So something very, very important that I wanted to make sure that came out of our conversation, Steve, is the approach why this approach? And so you started in on that, but you've talked a little bit more about this because there's a strategy here. This is not just. And yes, maybe you uncovered some stuff, but there is a strategy here.
[01:43:01] Speaker A: Yeah. So the asymmetric approach I use to approach by way of going in in person is multifaceted. So one is, as I mentioned earlier, that you were referring to is the fact that if you email or leave a voicemail or whatever, that if it's inconvenient for them, they're not going to respond to you. It's just not going to happen. Which only leaves in person.
But the other thing is, another thing is, is that you're gathering evidence if you do this correctly on the spot. Like with Ashley at the Office of the Governor, I got her on November 20th to make a completely false statement on the record that the Office of the Governor is not a state agency. I then got her to admit that she was wrong about that. But that directly affects the fact that I requested something through the actual six months earlier.
And that evidence right there becomes something you can use in a court proceeding or whatnot. It also shows the people what's going on because nowadays the way people are digesting news, they're not really reading articles as much as they used to. They're often going to YouTube x Facebook, watching videos of the thing happening. And in this case, the thing happening is they're. They're doing that. But the, the other thing, the third part of that is government is terrified literally to have you show up in person. And you need no more evidence than that than when you saw Governor Ferguson hold that press conference. And who was the guy that showed up at that one, Steve?
[01:44:49] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, it was.
[01:44:50] Speaker A: I mean, that's right. So Steve, I'm in, shows up and Bobby was really, really uncomfortable to say the least. Now, is anyone honestly worried that Steve Iman was Just going to all of a sudden stab the governor or whatever? No, of course not. I mean, he doesn't want to go to prison. He's not a lunatic. Right.
He's not going to do that. But the fact that his opposition, the governor's opposition was standing right there made him so profoundly uncomfortable. Because they know what's going on is true.
Right. As it relates to Steve, I'm in. Or as it relates to me doing the records index story.
And they know they can't escape.
They have to confront you right there, which is why they're using the teleworking policies and everything to have everybody work at distance. So there's no accountability.
[01:45:44] Speaker B: Thanks, Tracy. Sorry, I said Steve, it's Tim. I'm in. Sorry.
[01:45:47] Speaker A: Oh, Tim and I. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
So that's. Those are the three reasons why I do it the way that I do it, because it's the really the only way to get this accountability. And frankly, the accountability isn't really a particularly satisfying amount to this point, but it's the only way that I've been able to find any degree of accountability.
[01:46:09] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's, It's a great point. And it kind of comes back to, like, Elon Musk saying, you know, you are the news now, we are the news now, and we need to. To use these opportunities and it can be uncomfortable. I, you know, I'm not sure I feel confident even in doing what you do at this point, Steve, but you make such a great point. Like these offices, these, these people, employees or employees of the state, they're supposed to be working for us, and there are laws. And of course, you know, what I like is that you're civil. You're not, but you know your rights and you're not afraid to ask those uncomfortable questions and, and be direct about it. So it's very, very.
It's very important. So you also had shared with me another part of that strategy, and you talked about, like, the Mafia. So will you just share that a little bit about how they got the mafia?
[01:47:12] Speaker A: Oh, you mean in terms of how they're obfuscating?
Yeah. So basically what they're doing with this mafia approach is they are obfuscating, first of all, to just insulate themselves from any transparency. But once something starts to push through, and actually, Tim, I'm in a good example, right. Because look, look at the amount of damage that was done there.
When something starts to push through, they look for and find a mechanism to beat you down, destroy you, and make it not something worth pursuing against them. But as to your point earlier, that speaks exactly to this mafia issue.
When you say we're all news, we're all media, we're all press. That's true because it's inherent in our First Amendment.
Fox, msnbc, cnn, they all have FCC licenses. You do not. I do not. We don't have FCC licenses. Our FCC license is in the First Amendment.
So it allows us to go in. There's a, you know, effectively 342 million journalists in this country, every single American citizen, and they can't control that. And they've been using this mafia like tactic to control the mainstream media to basically say, if you get out of line, we'll pull your FCC license, we'll, you know, sue you, criminally charge you, whatever it is.
But they can't do that on a, on a individual level because what are you going to do? Arrest 342 million journalists? Right.
[01:48:56] Speaker B: And that's, this is so important. It's so important and it's so important what you're doing, Steve, because, you know, if we, and hopefully more and more people are getting this, I think a lot of us that are on X get this, but we need to help other people be informed that of course you're not going to hear about this on the nightly news.
You're not going to hear this from, you know, 60 Minutes. You're not going to hear about, they're not going to, they're not going to share this. So you can't wait for the mainstream.
[01:49:26] Speaker A: Media, yes, information and the mainstream media is a part of that mafia because the, you know, Como King, Cairo, Seattle Times, whatever, they're all in bed with Bobby and, and his gang of goons and they are not going to publish stories until it hits a point where it's basically as common and everyone is as aware of it as breathing air. At that point they're just gonna, they're just gonna admit to it and do their thing. But up to that point, they don't want to because once you start showing a crack in the armor, it's downhill from there for them. And so the mainstream media, like for example, the ones I mentioned in concert with the bigger ones, are in bed with the state government and they're not going to relinquish the control of the narrative. They're not going to relinquish controlling how you access records and have transparency. And that's why if anyone does decide if they're going to start requesting records going in, whether it's at a local agency level or State agency level, always, absolutely 100% of the time.
Record your interactions.
Take your cell phone, put it on record and record it. Because I have had.
Which is another story that's going to come out Thursday.
I was out on the San Juan Islands recently. I was out at Friday harbor, and one of the town, I guess receptionists, executive assistants, whatever, was trying to frame me on camera for a class B felony of stalking and intimidation and bullying because I was making a public records request on camera, recording it.
And for, you know, fortunately, the sheriff out there is amazing. He is seriously amazing. And so the deputy Krabs was very cool, too.
But this is the point is like, when you start pressuring government agencies to perform and they don't, they will straight up do that kind of stuff. And that's why you have to record when you have interactions with them, because otherwise it's your word against theirs and their words always going to win because they're the government.
[01:51:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. You got to record yourself. You know, we, we know to do that or I know to do that with any kind of, you know, journalists, public, you know, papers or media, because they like to cut and paste, you know, what you say.
So I've learned to do that. But you, you raise a great point when you go into these agencies to even just protect yourself is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:52:13] Speaker A: One of those governor stories where I went in and the guy, I don't know if he saw this one, but the, I don't know, calm down, police. It was basically sort of like first layer of security comes in and confronts me and says, well, I'm here because I, I aid the employees of the office of the governor when they're being harassed. And I said harass, like, what are you talking about?
Well, you know, you just keep pestering him and I'm like, so let me get this straight.
You're a state employee and you're trying to de escalate a situation, which is me making a public record request. So that's considered harassment. That's the official position of the state of government, State of Washington now.
And I kind of chewed him out assertively, not aggressively. But imagine if I didn't have that recorded, though, right now he could say, oh, he's getting aggressive. I need a state patrolman to come in here now. It's your word against the security guy, the state patrolman and the employees of the office of the governor. Whereas if that are recording of it, like I do hard argue that.
[01:53:15] Speaker B: Right? Yep, Exactly. Great point, great point. Well, Steve, this has been fascinating and I know you have so much more information through your YouTube videos. And I mean, we, we kind of touched on a few of the videos and the information pieces that you've done, but I know you also have a plethora of other ones. What, what kind of final thoughts do you want to share with everybody? You know, to kind of sum up the conversation or any other important points that you want to get across before we finish today?
[01:53:49] Speaker A: Yeah, well, first is I would read the. And I know it's not a fun read, but I would read the first nine sections of the Public Records act and then also section 520 and 580.
[01:54:01] Speaker B: Remind people. Yeah, remind people the number of the RCW again.
[01:54:06] Speaker A: Yeah, so it's RCW 42.56. And then 010's definitions, and then through section 90 goes through the most important parts of the Records act, like the just sort of meat and potatoes, day to day stuff.
520 talks about time frames and 580 is the public Records officer.
Those are the most important things to know. So definitely read those. If you're going to go and make a records request, you need to know those because inevitably you're going to get shenanigans. They're going to try to drag it out or whatever. And these are the tools that are going to aid you to the greatest degree in combating their obfuscation and delaying and all that kind of stuff.
I would also say document everything you can. So certainly email. I would say don't ever make a phone call because even if you do talk to them, the privacy statute of Washington State could be enacted to criminally charge you, you know, if you recorded the phone call. Whereas if you just email, you've got actual text, but then go in and follow up in person.
Because what they're afraid of, they're terrified of being exposed and humiliated for failing at their jobs.
And going in, in person and recording your interactions achieves that. It shows their incompetence.
And government survives by legitimacy. That's it.
That's all it does. And so if you can prove they're illegitimate, they've lost.
[01:55:36] Speaker B: Say that again.
[01:55:38] Speaker A: If government proves that they are illegitimate by their actions, they have lost.
[01:55:43] Speaker B: Right.
[01:55:44] Speaker A: And.
[01:55:44] Speaker B: And what survives?
You said something right before that.
[01:55:50] Speaker A: Well, their survival is, is predicated on legitimacy. I mean, that's, that's all it is. Yeah, that's. If they don't have that, they're done.
[01:55:59] Speaker B: Right, Right. That's awesome. Yeah. Been so, so good. Tracy had to chimed in Again, she said, we need you in Island County. Tracy's the one that has the felony mass charges when she did her operation role at the county auditors or county elections office, and they charged her for that. So.
[01:56:24] Speaker A: Felony for wearing a mask.
[01:56:26] Speaker B: What?
[01:56:27] Speaker A: For not a felony for not wearing a mask.
[01:56:30] Speaker B: Yeah, you. You might, you, you need to definitely connect Tracy. I'll help connect you guys afterwards. Yeah, you need to check into that. Yeah, it's, you know, and this is where again, I think us working together, talking about these things, talking how we can. We want government to start working for us. We want to end this corruption.
[01:56:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:56:52] Speaker B: And that's what's so frustrating about what happened with Tracy is here, you know, the observation, the party observationists for our election system is in statute.
[01:57:06] Speaker A: Right.
[01:57:07] Speaker B: And she was doing her duty as a Republican observer.
And, and I mean, it's spelled out right for. You have Democrat observers, party observers, and you have Republican observers. It's spelled out in statute. And she was doing her duty, volunteering her time.
And they did this because she wouldn't put on a mask that they determined at a local level. That was a, you know, a local policy that they added kind of all of a sudden. And I don't know all the details of this. I'm sure Tracy could fill us in.
[01:57:40] Speaker A: So, you know, I do vaguely recall that story. It's been a while. But I do remember that. I definitely want to talk to her about that because that's. I mean, I get the opposite because I wear a gator to work up. Up to my nose. And what a lot of them don't realize is I do it as a silent protest against fusion centers, which are an abomination against our fourth Amendment. And I do it because I'm not going to let another grown adult tell me how to wear my clothes, you know.
[01:58:11] Speaker B: Right.
[01:58:11] Speaker A: We're not in Saudi Arabia. We're not in North Korea. I'm not going to be told what clothes to wear and how to wear it.
So.
Yeah, it's crazy.
[01:58:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. Well, and. And there's double standards now. You know, that's gone. I mean, it used to be you go into a place where the mask off. Gone. And, you know, that was frowned upon. Well, now that's, you know, somewhat norm with antifa and everything. Not saying you're antifa.
You're also protecting your identity and, and other things. So. Yeah. Silent Majority Foundation, Hazelo versus Island County, I think is what it is, is the case. That's right. Silent Jordan. We had, we had Pete on here Talking a little bit about that early on. So, Steve, again, such great information, such amazing work you're doing. Remind people how they can follow you and follow your work. And also, if somebody wanted to reach out to you to connect with you, maybe if they've got a question or maybe they have some information about something you're working on, how would they get in contact with you?
[01:59:15] Speaker A: Well, you could obviously find me on YouTube at Inland Auditing Media on X. Same at. I am free auditing on Facebook at Inland Auditing Media.
And if you want to reach out to me by email, you can reach out to me at InlandAuditing Media.
R o t o n m a I l dot com.
[01:59:34] Speaker B: Say that again. The email, it cut out just a little bit.
[01:59:38] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, it's Inland auditing media at ProtonMail. And that's spelled P R O T O N M A I L.
Awesome.
[01:59:49] Speaker B: Steve, thank you so much for your time today and thank you for having me. And, you know, if we can, I mean, I know I'm going to continue to work with you and talk with you about these cases, but if there's anything we can do, if you've got a story that's dropping, if we can do this again to help get the information out there. I think that's what I see. And, and, and this is a plea to everybody watching. Please share, share these stories. Share. Go on, go on to Inland auditing Media Media's YouTube page and share those stories. People need to know this is what's happening right now. I mean, Steve is uncovering this almost daily, at least weekly. These cases of this corruption that's happening right here in our state.
And there's so much there. It's just that we need to help get this information out. And remember, we can't depend on the mainstream media to share these stories. They're not gonna. Right. They're in bed with each other. Right? The Mafia. We got to come up with a good name for the government. Gangsters or. I think, I think our FBI director might have taken that title, but it certainly feels like it. I mean, it is just major corruption going on for 35 years in our government and you're exposing it, Steve. So again, I'm just pleading with everybody, please share these stories, follow Steve and, and share it out as much as you can. You know, post it on comments when, when people are talking about other, you know, corruption in government. Share Steve's. Share Inland Auditing Media's stories as well to help promote this across not just our state, but in our country.
And I'm hoping that, you know, your approach and your, your strategy to get the FBI involved can make a difference here because you're right there. Our own government is probably not going to go after our own government and expose this.
[02:01:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I agree. And well, thank you for that full throated support. I really appreciate it. That's amazing. You've been absolutely wonderful today. And in the past, as I've worked with you over recent times, we've gotten to know each other a little bit. So I appreciate that. And yeah, I mean, you guys can reach out to me. As I explained, send tips and leads my way. I mean, that's literally how I work right now.
So send it my way, Tracy. I'll find a way to get a hold of you and bring some awareness however I can. And we'll just keep going that direction.
[02:02:23] Speaker B: That's right. Awesome. Well, thanks again, Steve. Thanks everybody for being here and blessings to you. And we look forward to continuing to watch the stories that you put out.
[02:02:32] Speaker A: Thanks, mj. Appreciate it.
[02:02:34] Speaker B: Take care, everybody.
