RPS records suit in high court

OLYMPIA – In a case that could cost the city of Spokane hundreds of thousands of dollars, the state Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday over an investigative journalist’s two-year fight for records relating to the downtown River Park Square project.

Tim Connor, a journalist for the online publication Camas Magazine, is suing the city for his attorney fees and $740,000 in penalties, on the grounds that the city wrongfully refused to turn over dozens of documents he requested in 2000 and 2001.

The city wants Connor’s lawsuit dismissed, saying he got most of the documents in 2002 as the result of a ruling in a federal case. That makes Connor’s case moot, the city’s attorneys said.

The city won the first two rounds in the case. A Spokane County Superior Court judge sided with the city, as did a three-judge Court of Appeals last year.

But several of the nine justices on the state’s highest court sounded skeptical Tuesday.

“Mr. Connor – who’s put up the fight or made the effort for two years – walks away empty handed?” said Justice Mary Fairhurst.

Justice Richard Sanders asked whether the city had paid Connor’s lawyer fees.

“I think that would be a good argument for mootness, if you just paid the man,” Sanders told Laurel Siddoway, one of the city’s attorneys in the case.

Siddoway said that Connor’s case dragged on partly because he and his lawyers failed to get a “show cause order” – a fast-track way for a judge to weigh a lawsuit’s merit.

“I expressed my continuing frustration that we were in limbo,” Siddoway said in an interview afterward. “This thing dragged on for four years … I just thought it was absurd that the case went on as long as it did.”

Connor was a writer for Camas Magazine, which focused intensely on the growing controversy surrounding River Park Square.

The renovation of the downtown mall and garage was first proposed in the mid-1990s as a way to shore up a crumbling retail district. The city and the mall development companies entered into a complicated set of agreements that included a federally guaranteed loan and bonds issued by a nonprofit organization to help cover some of the project’s costs.

The project, which includes retail stores, opened in September 1999. But from the beginning, the parking revenue from the project was far below projections. It could not cover the garage’s bond payments and expenses. The legal battle between the mall’s developer and the city eventually spread to a federal securities lawsuit that pitted bondholders against almost everyone connected with the project.

The mall is owned by affiliates of Cowles Publishing Company, which also owns The Spokesman-Review.

In 2000, Connor requested extensive city records about the project under the state Public Records Act.

“These were the crown jewels of the River Park Square story: What did city officials know and when did they know?” Connor said outside the courtroom Tuesday. Many of the papers were meeting notes, he said.

The city turned over some paperwork but told Connor that 238 of the documents were exempt from public disclosure, on the grounds that they were legal documents shielded by attorney-client privilege.

Meanwhile, the bondholders in the project filed their suit in federal court. That prompted the city to review the paperwork again. It shrank the list down to 111 exempt documents.

Connor, after months of trying to get the city to give him the remaining documents, filed suit in Superior Court.

“He tried to work with the city of Spokane for over 18 months,” said Nancy Pacharzina, one of Connor’s attorneys. “He didn’t rush to the courthouse to file a lawsuit.”

In December 2001, in response to another suit, the city shrank its list further, down to 18 documents. The city released most of what Connor had originally sought.

“The actions of [Connor] had literally nothing to do whatsoever” with the release of the documents, Siddoway told the high court.

But timeliness matters, Pacharzina said.

“By the time those documents were disclosed, the city had wrongfully withheld those documents for over two years,” she said. Under the city’s interpretation of the law, she said, any government agency could render a public-records lawsuit moot at any time by simply releasing the records on the eve of trial.

“But isn’t the goal the disclosure?” said Justice Bobbe Bridge.

The goal is also promptness, now and in the future, Pacharzina responded.

Bridge raised that issue with Siddoway, when she argued that Connor’s case is now moot.

“The documents have been produced,” Siddoway said.

“Well, not timely,” said Bridges. “Not promptly.”

Even if Connor wins in the Supreme Court, the court fight will likely continue. A victory for Connor would send the case back to Superior Court in Spokane, where a judge would finally have to rule on whether the city wrongly withheld the documents.

Earlier this year, Connor won $33,000 in penalties and roughly $60,000 in attorneys fees from the city for its refusal to release an earlier batch of documents related to River Park Square.