Seattle, WA
Rantz: Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison is failing on transparency
Seattle Metropolis Lawyer Ann Davison is doing an excellent job holding criminals accountable. However she’s falling woefully behind on workplace transparency.
Not like her predecessor Pete Holmes, Davison truly leads with compassion. She diverts the correct of criminals to get the assistance they want whereas understanding her workplace should have compassion for victims, too. Meaning jail time for harmful criminals.
Davison lower the median choice time on whether or not or to not cost by 98 %, leading to a 124 % enhance in instances filed. Holmes, for his half, did what he may to maintain criminals out of jail. It’s truly fairly tough to determine how he and the attornies who reported to him spent their days.
However transparency is taking a again seat.
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Transparency taking a again seat
There’s little doubt Davison is definitely working. However in relation to her workplace fulfilling easy public disclosure requests, she’s dropping the ball. And her communications crew is as unhealthy as Mayor Bruce Harrell’s workplace. They don’t actually provide a key element of their job: communication.
Public disclosure requests, or PDRs, permit members of the general public to achieve entry to paperwork, emails, court docket data, surveillance footage, and a lot extra. PDRs are an efficient device to uncover tales, and finally, maintain public officers and staff accountable.
However Davison’s workplace is understaffing her public disclosure unit, which is answerable for fulfilling PDRs. And it means requests take months to finish, even when they look like comparatively easy.
Typically, to present the looks that requests are being fulfilled inside an affordable period of time, they’re despatched in installments. Most troublesome, when requests are partially delivered, they look like executed with the intention of withholding what you’re most excited about seeing till the ultimate installment is full.
As unhealthy, her communications crew doesn’t assist fill the gaps once they can.
Davison stays silent on transparency issues
It’s unclear what number of workers members work on fulfilling these essential requests within the Seattle Metropolis Lawyer’s workplace. Davison’s workplace received’t reply primary questions on staffing.
Davison received’t reply to issues about her workplace’s transparency. Three requests for remark have been utterly ignored. Sadly, that is par for the course. And it’s wholly unacceptable.
Oftentimes, Davison’s communications crew drags its ft in responding. You’re compelled to nudge for feedback or data that they’re paid to offer.
They might have little respect for journalists’ work. Maybe she now has little curiosity in a conservative outlet after it was used to assist rally conservative or reasonable and unbiased voters after the final election. Possibly it’s a little bit little bit of each.
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This isn’t a singular downside
Oftentimes, communications workers perform as a publicist for his or her politician shopper when, in actuality, they work for the taxpayer. Their job is to disseminate data that we’ve got the best to entry, not simply what makes their boss look good.
To be clear, this downside isn’t distinctive to Davison.
Mayor Harrell’s communications director, Jamie Housen, is notoriously silent when requested questions he is aware of won’t be politically useful to reply. He merely received’t reply, not even keen to supply the courtesy of claiming “no remark.”
Typically they might suppose ignoring affordable questions from sure retailers — like KTTH Radio — means the story received’t generate any momentum. How’s that technique working for you? It reveals how little regard the workplace has for the media. However once they don’t like sure protection or framing, he’s fast to succeed in out.
This was the identical actuality below former Mayor Jenny Durkan. It ought to come as little shock that Durkan’s communications spokesperson Anthony Derrick now heads the communications workplace for Davison.
Mockingly, below former metropolis legal professional Holmes, the communications division was simpler to work with on primary requests.
Out of equity
I contemplated not scripting this criticism as a result of I respect her efficiency.
Davison is a Republican and it’s the primary time in a long time we’ve seen one elected to citywide workplace. Her technique is to place her head down and do the work with out calling consideration to her politics. It’s her greatest vulnerability as a politician in Seattle regardless that her private politics don’t form how she runs her workplace.
However I criticize Democrat politicians for an absence of transparency. I name out the Seattle Police Division for being woefully and inexcusably sluggish in relation to offering data to the media and public through disclosure requests. Why ought to I maintain again on Davison’s workplace? Sharing related politics or being overwhelmingly happy together with her efficiency isn’t a ok purpose to carry again criticism on an necessary difficulty.
I definitely perceive Davison’s technique of staying out of the limelight and letting her efficiency converse for itself. Politically, in Seattle, it’s good. However her technique is her downside — not mine.
Transparency is necessary. Ignoring media requests and placing too few assets into fulfilling public disclosure requests, particularly these made in good religion, isn’t merely disrespectful to the journalist asking questions. It’s disrespectful to the general public we’re serving.
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