Ep. 19 Seven Days To Die

Ep. 19 DOL 1 SEVEN DAYS TO DIE

[AI VO] (0:00 - 0:31)

Before we start, a quick heads-up. Some of the voices you'll hear reading documents in this podcast are AI-generated, but the words are real. They come straight from public records, produced by real people inside government. 

Further, if you're a public employee who's been asked to bend the rules, or if you've seen something that just doesn't sit right, we want to hear from you, confidentially, off the record. Your identity stays with us. You can reach out to us at contact at thepublicrecordsofficer.com. 

[AI VO] (0:36 - 0:45)

You're listening to the Public Records Officer Podcast, where we fight for your right to know. Now, here's your host, Jamie Nixon. 

[Nixon] (0:52 - 2:24)

Hello and welcome. This is the Public Records Officer Podcast. I am your host, Jamie Nixon. 

Today we are going to discuss some issues out of the Department of Licensing. This one is about people inside DOL, who sit in judgment over drivers accused of DUI and related licensing matters. Administrative law judges, they're called. 

Hearings examiners. Public officials whose job is supposed to require neutrality, discipline, professionalism, and a basic respect for the people who come before them. Today's story begins not with a policy memo or press release, but with a Teams chat. 

[Cuoio (WaTech)]

Get it gone.  

[Nixon]

I know. There it is again. 

It's the never-ending topic, right? This is the kind of chat that you've heard about here before, you know, where government workers tell the public it's casual, it's quick, it's transitory. You know, here today, gone in one week. 

The date of this chat, February 12th, 2025, is important, because just five days later, Governor Bob Ferguson would announce that he was directing WaTech to suspend Teams' automatic deletion feature while his administration conducted a six-month review. You see, just five days before the governor stopped that digital shredding, several DOL hearing examiners were talking in Teams as if the walls would hold no memory whatsoever. But, thanks to Ferguson's suspension, the walls have remembered. 

[AI VO] (2:24 - 2:58)

As a new administration, we are taking a close look at the ways we're serving the people. That includes our use of communications tools. I discussed the use of Teams chats with my cabinet in one of our first meetings. 

I am directing WATEC to suspend Teams' automatic deletion feature for the agencies it supports until my team has completed a thorough six-month evaluation. I am issuing the same direction to the agencies that have their own accounts. We expect this change to be made by the end of the week. 

[Nixon] (2:58 - 5:46)

That was an AI-voiced over-reading of the statement Governor Bob Ferguson gave on February 17th, 2025, regarding this matter. Now, if you've listened to the show, you know this announcement did not come from nowhere. It came after years of public records being automatically destroyed. 

It came after reporters, requesters, records officers, attorneys, and this podcast had already pulled enough thread to show that Washington's executive branch had been letting Teams chats vanish on a timer for years.  

And the Department of Licensing is not some innocent bystander in that story. In episode two of this podcast, I told you that before the state moved to a tenant-wide seven-day Teams deletion policy, some agencies had an agency-level control over how long their Teams chats were retained. 

Some were at 30 days. Some had even longer settings. And some agencies took advantage of the option to go much, much shorter. 

Looking at you, Department of Licensing. One freaking day. DOL had previously lived in the one-day deletion basement. 

Then, in summer of 2021, the state moved to the seven-day policy. And for years across the executive branch, public records were being destroyed after just seven days, regardless of whether the content of those records required longer retention.  

[Cuoio]

Get it gone. 

This is the part of the story that can be hard to explain to normal people because normal people have not spent enough time in the public records ecosystem to understand the phrase, transitory communication is where the undemocratic trouble lives here. And I'll explain. A public record does not stop being a public record because it was typed into Teams. 

A public record does not lose its legal significance because it was sent as a chat instead of an email. Retention is based on content and function, not convenience or location of the record. And yet, for years, this is how Washington treated Teams and other instant messaging platforms within its system. 

As if the platform itself could baptize the public records into some transitory misc. So when DOL hearing examiners used Teams on February 12, 2025, they were using a communication platform that had been built into a culture of disappearance. Now, what did they say in that chat? 

Well, let's take it out for a walk, shall we? This is how the chat starts. 

[AI VO] (5:46 - 5:47)

Hi, guys. 

[Nixon] (5:47 - 5:48)

Friendly, casual, normal. Crystal Fry writes that she had  

[AI VO] (5:49 - 5:53)

the funniest thing happen at a hearing. 

[Nixon] (5:53 - 6:16)

An attorney asked her to go off the record because he had a question. She says she usually does not like doing that after a hearing because it seems  

[AI VO]

shifty.  

[Nixon]

But she obliged. 

The attorney asks whether his client can go to Canada. Another hearing examiner responds,

[AI VO]

I mean, he could try.  

[Nixon]

Then another conversation begins. 

A pro se petitioner. High breath, alcohol result. A doctor's note about asthma. 

[AI VO] (6:17 - 6:20)

Does asthma make people less drunk than three times the legal limit? 

[Nixon] (6:20 - 8:28)

Other people in the chat here are, you know, responding to these chats, these messages being sent with laughter emojis and gifs that are suitable to laughing at these apparent jokes. Now, look, I, I understand Gallo's humor. I have worked in government and politics. 

I bartended for Christ's sake. Believe me, I get the human need to vent. But these are not random staffers getting annoyed with paper jamming up the printer again. 

These are public officials with quasi judicial power. Talking about people whose licenses, livelihoods, criminal exposure, immigration issues, family responsibility. I mean, the basic ability to function in our society may be tied to these proceedings. 

The chat kept going. A hearing examiner discusses an older Russian speaking petitioner in a financial responsibility case. She says it is maybe the fourth hearing. 

She has explained over and over what paperwork he needs. She says it is all through an interpreter. His wife interrupts. 

Once they used her daughter to translate. And as the story unfolds, it turns out the man may have been more comfortable speaking in Ukrainian than Russian. And no, they don't speak the same language. 

So now ask yourself, if you were that petitioner, would you feel good knowing that the people managing your hearing, returning your confusion, your language needs, your family struggle to navigate the system into some kind of group chat comedy material? Would you feel like the process respected you? Would you feel like your case was being handled by neutral, authentic decision-makers? 

I'm not asking whether every word in that chat is a legal violation. That's a different question. I'm asking whether this is what the public should expect from people wearing the robe. 

Because the public has a right to expect more from adjudicators than, you know, this hearing was an SNL skit. And yeah, that's essentially where this chat goes. 

[AI VO] (8:28 - 8:33)

The entire hearing was like that who's on first joke from the three stooges, but in Russian. 

[Nixon] (8:33 - 11:48)

Who's on first routine, first of all, is by Abbott and Costello, not the three stooges for fuck's sake. And that's obviously not the biggest issue here, but as a Gen Xer who was raised by television reruns and emotional neglect, I couldn't let that one go without commenting. The chat then moves into something more real. 

This is not just venting about awkward hearings or difficult litigants. This group starts discussing active hearing strategy, legal objections and order language in the team's chat that they expect to be destroyed in seven days. At one point, Emma Vetter says she overruled attorney Jeremy Burke on the record, and now he's mad at her. 

She asked the group if anyone has a good response to an objection to a toxicology letter. Will Jacobson replies that he has a quote unquote good blurb he uses for the written order. Then he posts language for an order overruling an objection. 

Another hearing examiner, Rain Casalegno, Rain Casalegno, forgive me if I'm getting the name wrong. I don't like getting names wrong, but Casalegno, Rain Casalegno. Rain posts a longer legal block with citations to the Washington Administrative Code and the revised code of Washington. Vetter responds favorably to this.  

This is not water cooler chatter here, right? This is a group of hearing examiners discussing legal arguments, objections, case law, and written order language in real time.

 While a hearing involving a specific attorney is still unfolding or freshly unfolding, and they're having these conversations on a platform that they fully expect will destroy all of this in seven days. We're not talking about a law school study group here. We're talking about hearing examiners who are supposed to decide matters fairly independently and based on the record before them. 

Now there may be internal procedures that allow some peer consultation during these hearings. Agencies can have templates and they can certainly have shared legal research and writing. That's not a big deal. 

They can talk about recurring issues. I'm not trying to pretend that adjudicators have to live in sealed glass boxes like collectible high-end action figures or something.  

However, there is a Grand Canyon size difference between structured legal support and a casual group chat where one examiner dealing with a live attorney argument asks her colleagues for help, gets draft language, gets case law tips, jokes about counsel, and then continues ruling. 

It is not merely a records or due process story. It's an appearance of fairness story. Who exactly is deciding this case kind of thing. 

Now comes the part that makes this chat infamous and really dark and really shitty. Later that night, the conversation turns again to attorneys. Jacobson discusses another attorney who had filed a memo on an untimely hearing issue, but apparently did not realize her office had requested a late hearing on her client's behalf. 

Jacobson says in that attorney's defense, her office had been sick with the flu and struggling. Then he adds… 

[AI VO] (11:48 - 11:55)

at least she wasn't a dick about it. Unlike some folks. And then Burke Brangwyn. 

[Nixon] (11:55 - 12:05)

Burke and Brangwyn. This is a reference to attorneys, Jeremy Burke and John Brangwyn. Vetter responds with laughter. Another DOL participant responds with laughter. Then Vetter writes… 

[AI VO] (12:06 - 12:13)

Whenever I visit my mom in Wenatchee, I wonder if I will bump into him somewhere. LOL. 

[Nixon] (12:13 - 12:22)

To which Jacobson replies,  

[AI VO]

maybe you could help us all out and bump into him with your car. Though I'm sure he'd find a way to argue hearings from his hospital bed. 

[Nixon] (12:23 - 12:43)

Really? A DOL hearing examiner, a quasi judicial staff member, suggesting another DOL hearing examiner could quote, help us all out unquote, by hitting an attorney with her car hard enough that the attorney would end up in a hospital bed. The response? 

[AI VO] (12:44 - 12:51)

Also criminal charges. Also he'd sue me. Also I'd probably get disbarred. 

[Nixon] (12:51 - 12:58)

Jacobson then says,  

[AI VO]

well, if you're going to be sensible about my entirely hypothetical suggestion, then sure. 

[Nixon] (12:58 - 14:24)

An entirely hypothetical suggestion. There's a phrase doing a lot of frantic legal work. I'm not going to say that Will Jacobson had a concrete plan to commit vehicular assault. 

I'm not saying that Emma Vetter had any intent to harm anyone. What I am saying is that a public hearing examiner in a government team's chat suggested that one attorney could quote, help us all out unquote, by hitting another attorney with her car and other hearing examiners laughed instead of saying, Hey, maybe don't joke about maiming counsel before this office. Not because this is the most violent thing you ever said in a workplace chat or anything like that. 

It's because of who said it, where they said it, who they said it about and what this chat reveals about the culture inside that office. These aren't just coworkers talking about a frustrating vendor. These are hearing examiners talking about attorneys who appear before them. 

People subject to their authority. People arguing cases in their hearing room. Some people pleading for their very livelihoods. 

And the issue is not just one comment. The comment lands in a chat already filled with dismissive comments about petitioners, live hearing discussions, legal strategy, order language, and professional contempt for certain attorneys. That is the context. 

Attorney John Brangwen eventually saw the record and he was not amused. 

[AI VO] (14:25 - 15:00)

He wrote to DOL saying today for the first time, I discovered that Mr. Jacobson on February 12th, 2025 suggested one of your other hearing examiners strike either me or my law partner. It's not clear who with their car forceful enough to cause hospitalization. I am not going to sit idly and allow a member of the WSBA threatened or suggest physical violence and injury to my law partner or me. 

I will be reporting this incident to the WSBA office of disciplinary counsel. 

[Nixon] (15:00 - 24:42)

Brangwin went on to say that he was deeply troubled that other hearing examiners did not report the misconduct or tell Jacobson it was inappropriate, but instead took the time to laugh about it. And you know what? That's totally fair. 

This is not some pearl clutching overreaction from a lawyer who can't take a joke. If a lawyer appearing before your tribunal reads a chat where one of your hearing examiners suggest someone should hit him or his law partner with a car and your colleagues laugh, that lawyer is going to wonder what the hell is happening inside your office. And so should the public. 

DOL hearings are not theater. There's not some improv night at the administrative law chuckle hut. These things affect real people, real families. 

Someone's license may determine whether they can work, take their kids to school, care for a parent or keep their life from sliding sideways in whatever other way. Of course DUI matters are serious. Public safety matters. 

And yeah, some arguments made by attorneys may be repetitive, strained, legally weak. Welcome to the practice of law. If you cannot hear annoying arguments without turning the attorneys, making those arguments into group chat villains of some kind, perhaps the job requires a hard look in the mirror and maybe you need to go for a long contemplative walk. 

The public deserves hearing examiners, judges who can rule against someone without mocking them. The public deserves adjudicators who can overrule an attorney without treating the attorney as an enemy combatant. The public deserves a system where the person holding decision-making power remembers that the people before them are not content. 

They are people. Now let's return to the timing here because this is where the public records piece becomes the whole ballgame. This chat happens on February 12th, 2025. 

At that moment, absent some hold or other preservation event, I have not seen these records. The ordinary statewide team's auto deletion policy would have meant this chat was headed towards destruction in seven days, February 13, 14, 15, 16, February 17th. The governor now makes his announcement five days later, a suspension of the auto deletion, pause, a sudden halt to it all. 

The policy that had been destroying public records on a timer gets interrupted before this chat can vanish. Now I want to be quite fair here. I do not have a record where any of these hearing examiners writes anything like, you know, we can say anything in teams because it will delete in seven days. 

I don't have that. So I want to frame this correctly. It is a reasonable inference that these hearing examiners were communicating in a system they understood to be temporary. 

Remember DOL had previously used a one day deletion policy, the statewide policy had been seven days and was seven days when this chat occurred, the entire government bureaucracy had been operating in a team's environment where these chats disappeared quickly unless preserved. And five days later, Ferguson stopped the clock. It's not some minor detail. 

It's kind of the whole plot twist. This chat survived the digital shredder and the public got to see what it was never supposed to see. This is why I've spent so many hours chasing what some people would love to dismiss as technical records management nonsense. 

Because technical records management nonsense is where government accountability goes to die. The auto deletion policy was not about storage efficiency or saving agencies from having to review too many chats. The auto deletion idea created a culture. 

It taught public employees that a major channel of government communication was temporary by design. It taught them, or at least allowed them to believe, right? That the chat box was not quite real. 

It was a place where serious work that should have been retained way longer than seven days could be discussed casually. Where legal issues could be workshopped in the same stream as memes, jokes, you know, and apparently professional contempt for others. Where the public might never see what was said. 

And it makes sense, right? When you build a system where the record disappears quickly, you should not be surprised when people behave like the record is going to disappear quickly. That's the cultural rot underneath this entire story and underneath a lot of this entire podcast. 

When government officials believe the walls have no memory, that's when they tell you who they are. And in this case, they told us a whole lot. They told us what they thought about pro se petitioners, about certain attorneys. 

They showed us how quickly professional frustration slides to contempt. And then five days later, the system changed just enough for the public to get the transparency it should have always had. And they got to observe the carnage. 

Now, if this were only about one ugly chat, it would still be important. But this story is not only about this one ugly chat. There was a fire hose this week of records coming at me. 

Not just from my requests, but from concerned citizens we'll say. These records suggest that when these materials started surfacing, the problem inside the department of licensing did not end with this embarrassment. The problem evolves going forward after February 12th. 

The office did not simply say we need to be more professional. We need to respect the role of public records. You know, we need to treat teams like the public record system. 

It is. We need to make sure our hearing process maintains the appearance and reality of fairness. No, at least if that happened, those are not the records that I got. 

What we do see is that by the summer of 2025, DOL's administrative legal office staff were very worried about public records requests. They were worried about chats and emails. They were very concerned about the record staff pulling those materials and worried about what was going to be disclosed. 

To be fair, some of the concerns that I see in the records are legit. Records can include private medical information, family photos, things that should be reviewed carefully, for sure. Redacted when the law allows or requires and handled with all due seriousness. 

No one should be cavalier about privacy and we are not cavalier about it here. Privacy, however, is not a magic word that turns public records avoidance into good government. And what comes next in this story is not merely a discussion about privacy. 

We're going to hear discussions about double deleting. We're going to hear about folders that were labeled delete soon. We're going to hear about a folder titled supervisory file do not release for public records requests. 

It is about asking whether DOL can use a more transitory communication method like Jabber. If we can't have the magical disappearing auto-deletion ink of Teams chats, can we use Jabber instead? It's about using video chats and meetings to avoid creating records. 

It's about judges taking, it's about judges talking about the public records team as if the record staff were the problem because the record staff found the records the judges created and didn't want released. But that part of the story deserves its own episode because this is where DO because, because this is where the DOL story stops being merely about what group of hearing examiners, because this is where the DOL story stops being merely about what a group of hearing examiners said when they thought the chat would disappear. It now becomes a story about what an agency does after it learns the chats did not disappear. 

And that's where it gets even darker. The real scandal is not only the chat. The real scandal is the subsequent freak out. 

The public record did exactly what the public records act is supposed to do. It showed us how government acts when it thinks no one is watching. And once DOL realized the public could see behind the curtain, the next conversation was not only about what had been said, it was about how to make sure the next thing said stayed hidden behind that curtain.

So next time on the public records officer podcast, DOL part two, delete another day.

[AI VO] (24:43 - 26:25)

That's it for this episode of the public records officer podcast. A quick note before you go, some of the voices you heard on the show weren't from real people. Some were totally synthetic AI generated to read from public records and legal depositions that are yep, public.

You'll also hear real human voices like live audio from state meetings and the occasional passionate rant from the show's gorgeous host. Every episode has a full transcript at the public records officer.com. It breaks down which clips came from humans and which came from our robot friends.

Think of it like liner notes for digital democracy. You'll also find links to the original documents and recordings we talked about hosted on Google drive free and public. So if you want to fact check us, go nuts.

That's kind of the point. If this show got you fired up or even just mildly interested, check out the Washington coalition for open government. They're a nonprofit that fights for transparency and they've got resources if you want to help or just learn more.

And Hey, if you work for the state and you've seen one too many messages accidentally disappear, we'd love to hear from you confidentially, unless you want to be famous. The public records officer podcast is a creation of Nixon and daughter productions powered by good coffee, better whiskey, a microphone, a legal tab, and the apparent misguided belief that government should actually be accountable to people, which is adorable. Really. 

Thanks for listening. See you next time. And remember, you're not paranoid. 

They really did delete it.