Reports Show Judges Among The Very Rich Request To Post Disclosure Forms On Internet Spawns Legal Fight

Eastern Washington’s federal judges are all millionaires or nearmillionaires, according to 1998 financial disclosure reports.

U.S. District Judge Alan McDonald of Yakima, a semi-retired senior judge, is by far the wealthiest federal jurist in Eastern Washington, the reports show.

In addition to his $141,300 annual judicial salary, McDonald’s stock, property and agribusiness assets - minus liabilities - are worth between $8.3 million and $38.9 million.

The estimates cannot be refined further because the federally mandated forms allow reporting of assets and liabilities in very broad categories.

For instance, McDonald’s U.S. Bancorp common stock is listed as being worth between $1 million and $5 million.

His assets include a half interest in a Yakima land development company, Marudo Associates, worth $5 million to $25 million.

McDonald also lists substantial stock holdings in many companies, including Boeing Co., American Express, Washington Water Power Co. (Avista) and Philip Morris. During 1998, he sold or redeemed $1 million to $3.2 million in stocks and bonds.

Here are the asset ranges, minus reported liabilities, for the other U.S. District judges based in Spokane:

Chief Judge William Fremming Nielsen, $901,000 to $3.31 million. Nielsen has mutual fund and stock holdings, including Coca-Cola, Intel, Disney and Gillette Co.

Robert Whaley, $1.2 million to $3.77 million. Assets include retirement funds from his former law firm and from his tenure as a state judge, plus dozens of mutual funds and stocks, including Boeing, Nordstrom and Microsoft.

Justin Quackenbush, a semi-retired senior judge, $365,000 to $975,000. He listed a free membership in Spokane’s Empire Club, worth $720 a year, as a gift. Assets include stock and bond mutual funds and condominiums in California and Idaho.

Fred Van Sickle, $662,000 to $2.05 million. He lists many mutual funds and stocks, including US West, Albertson’s, Microsoft and Compaq Computer.

Edward Shea, $748,700 to $2.27 million. The district’s newest judge lists several sources of outside income, including rental property in Pasco, income from his former law firm, and many mutual funds and stocks, including Microsoft, Sonat Inc. and Immunex Corp.

Lawyers who become federal judges “have a background of some success in life, and they have been compensated for that,” Chief Judge Nielsen said.

The robust stock market also has helped propel some federal judges into the millionaire ranks, Nielsen said.

“The stock market in the last 10 years has made millionaires of a lot of people who’d otherwise just be people with mid-range wealth,” he said.

Congress required the annual disclosure for judges and other high-ranking government officials in the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, a post-Watergate reform.

Judges also are required to list gifts and reimbursements of expenses associated with giving speeches.

It normally takes less than a month for a journalist or other member of the public to obtain the annual disclosure forms, kept at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts in Washington, D.C.

Before the forms are released, court administrators inform every judge of the identity of the person making the request and require a check for copying costs.

That process hit a snag last fall.

The Spokesman-Review’s Nov. 18 request was temporarily held hostage to an ongoing free-press dispute between the federal judiciary and APBNews.com, a New York-based Internet news company that wants to post reports for the nation’s 1,600 federal judges on its Web site.

After a national committee of judges balked at the request in December, citing security concerns, APBNews.com sued.

Meanwhile, in February the newspaper finally obtained the requested financial reports for U.S. District Court judges in the Eastern District of Washington.

The 15-member Committee on Financial Disclosure of the Judicial Conference of the United States voted to deny APBNews.com’s request.

The Judicial Conference, made up of 26 federal judges who oversee the federal courts, is chaired by Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

The committee said Internet dissemination of judges’ financial data would sidestep the Ethics in Government Act requirement that people submit individual, written requests for the information.

Critics say that requirement has a chilling effect on attorneys, who may want to know whether a judge has assets that could pose a conflict of interest, but hesitate to request the forms because the judge is notified.

The judges said Internet access could be a security threat, according to their Dec. 14 statement.

Their decision was condemned by government watchdog and free-press groups, including Common Cause and the Society of Professional Journalists. The conservative Freedom Forum labeled their stance a “First Amendment Outrage.”

On Dec. 22, APBNews.com sued the judicial committee and Attorney General Janet Reno. The Justice Department is representing the judges in the litigation.

The denial “infringed upon the right of the public to scrutinize the judiciary,” in violation of APBNews’ First Amendment rights, according to the civil complaint.

The judges’ security concerns are vastly exaggerated, said Bob Port, a senior editor at APBNews.com. “There’s little in the forms that could be used to threaten them,” he said.

Judges aren’t required to list their home addresses, names of family members or Social Security numbers. And the Judicial Conference has never documented threats against judges from information gleaned from disclosure reports, the APBNews.com complaint says.

In January, the company sent a survey to federal judges for feedback on the dispute. Some 400 judges replied, and by an 8-1 margin opposed listing their assets on the Internet, Port said.

Most respondents said they feared for their security, but some judges said the judiciary had overreacted to the Internet issue. One judge said the denial “makes us look like a bunch of jerks.”

Nielsen opposes putting the judges’ reports on the Internet.

“When we take the federal bench, there are a lot of rights as private citizens we give up. But there’s a line beyond which we shouldn’t be expected to go,” he said.

A disgruntled person once filed a lien against his house and family assets in a “shakedown” attempt, Nielsen said.

“The exact identification of any stock we have shouldn’t be on the Internet for potentially improper purposes. I think filing the disclosure forms as we do now is sufficient,” he said.

Other news organizations, including the Kansas City Star and WNBC, a New York television station, already post the holdings of local federal judges on their Web sites.

The Kansas City, Mo., newspaper took that step last year after reporting that, in dozens of cases, federal judges in Missouri and Oregon (used for comparison purposes) were making legal rulings on companies in which they held stock.

The Star series identified more than 300 court orders by judges who had a financial interest in the outcome. The judges were not recusing themselves as their own ethics guidelines require, the Star found.

After the Star’s reports, federal judges in western Missouri agreed to file lists of their investments in the courthouse in Kansas City.

There is no such list available in Spokane for the Eastern District of Washington. But the disclosures about the Missouri and Oregon judges have prompted Spokane judges to be even more careful, Nielsen said.

“A lot of us who own stock have to keep track of it on a daily basis. Every time I’m assigned a case, I immediately look at the docket sheet. I either OK it, I don’t take it - or I sell the stock. I do my best,” he said.

This sidebar appeared with the story: THE REPORT

Go online to www.spokane.net/judges to see financial disclosure reports for Eastern Washington federal judges.