Our View: City should face consequences when messing up

Back when the city of Spokane pursued aggressive countersuits against citizens who filed legitimate requests for public information, city officials defended the strategy. Mayors stayed out of it.

Until now.

Mayor Mary Verner quietly issued a directive this year to rein in the practice. It is unusual for a municipality to go after complainants. It is not common in Washington state’s other cities or in Spokane County.

“There’s an increased level of scrutiny now,” says City Attorney Howard Delaney, adding that he’s “not an aggressive counterclaim person myself.”

That’s good news, because there are attorneys working for him who are and they’ve damaged the city’s credibility on such issues as transparency and accountability. We hope the move presages a new attitude at City Hall that shows more interest in doing the right thing, rather than victory or defeat.

If the city has violated a citizen’s civil rights, it should want to rectify the matter, not force complainants to hire lawyers to defend themselves against ironic allegations, such as “conspiracy to misuse the judicial process.” That creative verbiage was a favorite of the city attorney’s office, according to a review by The Spokesman-Review of two dozen civil rights cases.

Countersuits are legal. They’re intended to shield law enforcement officers from frivolous claims. But the city of Spokane had been violating the spirit of the law by filing them against citizens who turned out to have legitimate claims, some of which resulted in payouts. The city paid out $2.5 million in claims between 1996 and 2007.

Countersuits are also scary. They force citizens to hire private attorneys to fend off the taxpayer-funded ones. If the city prevails, complainants have to pay the legal costs. The risks to the city are lower, because it is spending other people’s money.

In defending the strategy last year, former City Attorney Jim Craven said such suits sent a signal: “We’re going to defend this case come heck or high water.”

But the strategy also sent a message of contempt. It’s as if the city was saying, “How dare you fight City Hall.”

Verner is to be commended for rejecting the bottom-line thinking and placing this issue in a broader context. Government is designed to help people, not threaten them. And when government messes up, it should forthrightly face the consequences, not unleash its attorneys.