PRIBC requested copies of PRCAC votes

By Pat Grubb

In a letter dated January 21, 2020, the Point Roberts Independent Business Council (PRIBC) submitted an open public records requesting all emails received or sent to comments@pointrobertscac.org email address. The email address was the one used to receive votes for the two candidates for the vacant position on the Point Roberts Community Advisory Committee.

PRIBC secretary/treasurer Tom O’Brien subsequently wrote Whatcom County Civil Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Royce Buckingham on February 21 alleging that  PRCAC had failed to “provide full and complete disclosure.”

In O’Brien’s letter, he wrote, “Whereas during the course of the timeframe in question, the PRCAC had purportedly undertaken an ‘email vote’ for an At-Large Vacancy, which they claimed resulted in one of the two applicant candidates in question having received more votes than the other ,,,, Within the response received from the Whatcom County Public Records Office on January 29, 2020, no records of an email vote could be found.”

However, according to PRCAC at large member Stephen Falk, PRCAC had never received a request from the PRIBC for any records at any time. Standard practice for individuals seeking public records involves asking the specific agencies possessing the records for them.

In his letter, O’Brien also alleged that “members of the PRCAC are conducting committee business via their own personal emails, which are then not within the range of public disclosure.” This, too, is a misunderstanding of the scope of the Public Records Act. All public records are subject to disclosure whether they be texts on personal phones or email accounts etc. as long as they don’t fall under a statutory exemption.

At the time, a number of individuals expressed reluctance to vote in the PRCAC election due to the fact that it was not a secret vote.