Where’d That Policy Go?
Published on May 29, 2008
Center takes up cause of Spokane photographer Don Hamilton in open meetings spat with Spokane County officials.
On behalf of noted Spokane photographer Don Hamilton, the Center for Justice is prodding Spokane County Commissioners to make clear that people who try to videotape county public meetings won’t be subject to harassment or detention.
In a letter sent earlier this week, CFJ attorney Bonne Beavers asks commissioners Mark Richard, Todd Mielke, and Bonnie Mager to follow through on an e-mailed statement from Richard to state Sen. Lisa Brown two years ago. The e-mail was a response to Brown’s office after Hamilton was twice accosted by county officials when he tried to use his camera and a microphone to record county public meetings.
In his e-mail to Senator Brown on April 19, 2006, in which he criticized the photographer, Richard nonetheless assured Brown that “(w)e have initiated a policy to clarify that public meetings are open to the public and can be recorded in response to this incident.”
But two years later, no clarification appears to have been forthcoming from the county. Last month, the Center filed public records requests with both the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office and the County’s public disclosure officer seeking policies governing the videotaping of public meetings. The Sheriff’s Office replied that while it recognizes citizen’s rights to make audio and video recordings of public meetings,
it has no written policy, nor does it cover the subject in its training of deputies. The only related document produced by the county’s public disclosure officer was Commissioner Richard’s two-year-old e-mail to Senator Brown.
Hamilton’s run-ins with the county began in February of 2006 when he tried to make a video and audio record of what county officials were telling concerned citizens about the county’s plans to widen and straighten Bigelow Gulch Road northeast of Spokane. Hamilton, who’s well-known in Spokane both for his acclaimed work and gregarious personality, is part of a group opposed to the county’s road project.
Video of the encounter show the photographer met stiff and, at times, verbally abusive resistance from county officials, one of whom walked out of the meeting rather than allow himself to be recorded talking to citizens about the project. A sheriff’s deputy at the meeting to discuss local traffic problems originally sided with the protesting county officials and informed Hamilton that his taping violated the state’s two-party consent law. The deputy backed down only after attorney Tom Keefe assured the officer that he was wrong in asserting that the two-party consent law applied to public meetings.
Hamilton was accosted a second time when, the following week, he tried to videotape the commissioners’ weekly briefing.
“While Mr. Richard and Sheriff Knezovich may know the law regarding the Open Public Meetings Act,” writes Beavers in her May 27th letter on Hamilton’s behalf, “without a formal policy, it is unclear how the County can ensure that the public’s exercise of its first amendment rights is not chilled by county employees who have not had the benefit of formal clarification.”
“We would appreciate further clarification as to what policy was initiated by Commissioner Richard and how it is being implemented today,” she concludes.
Posted May 29th