Public meeting tapings meet resistance

Spokane County sheriff’s deputies have twice confronted people videotaping public meetings in the last month, prompting a local video producer to contend county officials are trying to discourage his involvement in the government process.

At a public meeting last month on the proposed widening of Bigelow Gulch Road, county employees incorrectly used a state law to argue that their comments on the project could not be recorded. An armed deputy ordered video photographer Don Hamilton, a resident of the area and opponent of the widening, to stop recording their conversations. The deputy later changed his mind after a private attorney said he was misquoting the law.

At a meeting of the Spokane County commissioners last week, another armed deputy demanded to see Hamilton’s credentials after he had just videotaped the commissioner’s morning briefing.

“This, to me, clearly has a chilling effect,” said Hamilton, a longtime professional photographer and producer of commercials for business and political clients.

County officials deny that there’s an attempt to discourage Hamilton or anyone else from recording or participating in public meetings where public projects are being discussed. The inquiry at the courthouse was just a spot check of an unrecognized credential, a sheriff’s official said.

They do concede that deputies and county Engineering Department staff were wrong last month when they said Hamilton and his nephew Matt Vielle couldn’t record comments by county workers made at an open house for the proposed Bigelow Gulch expansion.

“I think maybe that was a misunderstanding,” County Engineer Ross Kelley said this week.

Kelley said he and members of his staff, who were at the Feb. 16 open house held by the county to discuss the project, relied on the advice of a deputy, who had contacted a Sheriff’s Department supervisor after Hamilton and Vielle arrived at the open house. The deputy was at the meeting to discuss traffic problems on a roadway he patrols, not to provide security, he added.

Video recorded by Hamilton and Vielle shows that, at various times, county engineering employees and a deputy tell the camera operator not to record conversations.

“You can do video, but you have to have permission to do audio. That’s state law,” Kelley says at one point on the video.

“I don’t give you my permission to record me,” Bill Hemmings, the county’s program development engineer, says at another point. Hemmings eventually left rather than be recorded.

Deputy Greg Lance also tells Hamilton not to record anything a county employee says without permission, or anything he says, because “I don’t want you to record me.” Such recording would violate the state’s “two-party consent” law, Lance said.

Hamilton continues to record, and Lance later relents when private attorney Tom Keefe, a friend of Hamilton’s who accompanied him to the open house, says that’s not what the law covers. Eventually Lance tells employees they don’t have to talk, but what they say can be recorded.

County prosecutors, who provide legal advice for the Engineering Department and all other county offices, agreed last week that Keefe was right, and the deputy was wrong. The department had not asked them for advice, which was not unusual for a night meeting, prosecutors said.

Someone taping a private conversation would have to have permission of everyone involved, said Deputy Prosecutor Kevin Corsmo. “A public hearing can’t be considered a private conversation,” he said.

Kelley said his employees were merely trying to prevent what they considered private conversations between staff and people who lived near the project from being recorded without their consent. County employees were concerned because they didn’t recognize Vielle.

“We know Don (Hamilton), we know what he’s doing,” Kelley said. “It’s not our policy, when we’re at an open meeting, to not talk to people.”

Hamilton points out, however, that he also was told by county staff, including Lance, not to record what they were saying.

Hamilton said he wanted to record county employees’ answers to questions to make sure they weren’t saying different things to different people. The reaction from county engineering staff at the open house was “bizarre,” he said, as was an encounter he had after videotaping the county commissioner’s Tuesday morning briefing session.

After the meeting, a deputy and a sheriff’s supervisor approached him in the commissioners’ lobby and asked to see his press credential. That conversation also was recorded by Hamilton’s camera.

“I just want to make sure what kind of press pass you have, where that was issued from,” a deputy says.

“Did we run a security check on you?” asks the supervisor, Jail Commander Jerry Brady, who had attended the briefing.

After Hamilton shows him his press credential, which is issued by the America Society of Motion Picture photographers, and assures them that he went through the courthouse’s security screening, they tell him there’s no problem.

Brady said later that he had called the deputy to check on Hamilton’s credential, which he didn’t recognize when he saw it on the photographer’s pocket. His only concern, Brady said, was that a courthouse security guard might have improperly waved Hamilton through without checking his gear.

The county issues its own press credentials, which allow reporters and photographers to bypass the screening station, if they’ve had background checks. That’s the security check he was asking Hamilton about, Brady said.

Hamilton said this week he has no problem with the way he was treated by deputies, who all exhibited “a high level of professionalism.” But he has trouble understanding why any county employees would object to being on the record for the things they say or do at public meetings.

Todd Mielke, chairman of the board of commissioners, said he recognized Hamilton at the briefing session and didn’t think there was anything unusual about him taping the meeting. He didn’t know until a reporter told him that deputies had checked his credentials after the meeting.

There’s no barrier to anyone recording a commissioner’s meeting, and no need to show credentials, Mielke said.

He also didn’t know that county employees had improperly invoked the “two-party consent” law to avoid being recorded at the open house, but attributed it to a “disconnect” in communications that would be corrected. County employees apparently guessed at the law, and guessed wrong, he said.

“When we have a public meeting, the public is welcome to come to it,” he said. “We’ll make sure there is great clarity … what is a public meeting.”