The Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation has filed a lawsuit against the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife over withholding public records that it claims violates the state’s public records act.
The Sportsmen’s Alliance initially sought public records in September 2023 pertaining to the business of the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission, according to a Tuesday news release from the Alliance.
“The department has yet to deliver even a tiny fraction of the documents it identified as relevant to the Sportsmen’s Alliance’s request,” according to the Alliance.
“Over 500 days have passed, and we’ve received less than 0.01 percent of the documents the department identified as relevant to our request,” said Dr. Todd Adkins, senior vice president at the Sportsmen’s Alliance. “Instead, we’ve been consistently strung along, with delivery promised by ever-extending deadlines. …”
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife told McClatchy via email that it has received the complaint, adding that the agency is not able to comment on active litigation.
The documents the Alliance seeks pertain to a Nov. 18, 2022, Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting at which it voted to cancel spring bear hunts. The Alliance says the vote came as a surprise to them and Washington hunters because the meeting’s agenda gave no indication that a cancellation vote would be considered.
As a result, the decision was made “without providing sportsmen the opportunity to provide meaningful comments,” the Alliance news release says.
The Sportsman’s Alliance contends the commission violated open public meeting laws that would have notified the public that such a vote was to happen.
“The surprise vote raised concerns that members of the commission had routinely engaged in private communications among themselves concerning commission activities, meetings and votes,” the Alliance contends. “In order to investigate the activities of the commission leading up to the meeting and vote, the Sportsmen’s Alliance sought public records under the PRA.”
Washington’s PRA requires the department to compile and release requested records in a reasonable amount of time. “At its current rate in processing our request, the department will take 1,975,034 days, or over 5,411 years, to produce the responsive records,” the Alliance says in its news release.
“The department’s PRA request system is broken, and we’re hopeful our lawsuit results in a voluntary or mandatory fix,” said Michael Jean, litigation counsel at the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation. “In the meantime, however, we are asking the court to compel the release of the public records we’ve lawfully requested in order to hold the commission accountable for any statutory missteps it may have taken.”