Ep. 21 'People Like Jamie Nixon' - The Requesters Are Not the Problem

Ep. 21 People Like Jamie Nixon: The Requesters Are Not the Problem

[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 the public records officer.com. 

[Nixon] (0:32 - 0:41)

What you're about to hear are AI readings from comments posted under my op ed that was published in the Seattle Times on Monday, July 13th, 2026. 

[AI VO] (0:42 - 0:46)

The number of documents to review has exponentially increased. 

[AI VO] (0:46 - 0:55)

Those costs are running in the millions of dollars per year, probably tens of millions across all public agencies in Washington state. 

[AI VO] (0:55 - 1:00)

No one intended the costs to reply to requests to fall wholly on the agency. 

[AI VO] (1:01 - 1:14)

Which would you rather have? Four police department staff members paid just to respond to requests, or one public records officer and two more police officers on the streets? Because that's now the choice. 

[AI VO] (1:15 - 1:26)

The penalty for missing records, even inadvertently, is so draconian that the public records officer has to build a haystack of records and then start searching it to find the needles. 

[AI VO] (1:27 - 1:37)

The Washington State Public Records Act needs to be amended to reduce the number and type of records that people like Jamie Nixon can request, not expand it. 

[AI VO] (1:38 - 1:46)

When the public disclosure laws were first passed and everything was analog, much of the expense to comply was put on the people who requested the records. 

[AI VO] (1:46 - 1:57)

If only Jamie's emails and telephone and chat correspondence were subject to the same scrutiny, the public might find out that he isn't doing this in service of better government. 

[AI VO] (1:58 - 2:10)

The law has created a cottage industry for people who profit by requesting records, then suing and winning financial judgments when government agencies can't produce the records in the timelines required by law. 

[Nixon] (2:11 - 3:31)

Critics of the Public Records Act almost always begin with the burdensome requester. They begin with an inmate, the so-called frequent flyer, activists, lawyers, journalists. It's the person filing too many requests, asking for too many records, making government employees nervous, and apparently preventing police officers from walking the streets of our communities. 

They almost never begin with the governor who failed to modernize the system. They do not begin with the agency executive who bought thousands of Microsoft licenses, handed out mobile devices, encouraged employees to conduct public business through instant messages, and then failed to build a lawful system for preserving and retrieving those messages. They don't seem to ever begin with the attorney general who warned agencies that Microsoft's communications tools were not compliant with Washington records law out of the box, then spent years defending the automatic destruction of records those tools generated. 

They don't ever seem to begin with legislative leaders who have responded to the digital age by claiming broader privileges, classifying more communications as transitory, and making it harder for the public to see how their laws are written. They begin with the requester, with us, we the people. 

[AI VO] (3:32 - 3:36)

The intent of the law when passed was not open to the public free of charge. 

[Nixon] (3:37 - 6:34)

As I just mentioned, that comment appeared beneath an op-ed I wrote for the Seattle Times that was published on July 13th, 2026. My column was about Washington's attorney general's office and disappearing electronic communications. The attorney general's office writes the model rules for public disclosure. 

It trains public employees, advises state agencies, and presents itself as a guide for open government. Its own model rules warn agencies against indiscriminate, content-blind, automatic deletion, yet the executive branch spent years automatically deleting Microsoft Teams chats after seven days, while the attorney general's office defended that system in court. Records I obtained also showed that the AGO directed employees to use Cisco Jabber, a communication system where messages could disappear when a computer was shut down or restarted. 

Employees were instructed to clean out a local message folder weekly and not retain Jabber records for more than 30 days. Other records showed AGO employees using Jabber for discussions about briefs, pleadings, deadlines, and case matters. You can find links to those records when you read the op-ed piece. 

The op-ed piece is linked with the records that I'm discussing here. That was the subject of my column. The state's chief legal office was not modeling the model rules it suggests everyone else follows. 

The response from some of the readers was not outraged at that contradiction. It was concerned about the burden created by people asking to see those records. That reaction is going to be the story here today. 

I wrote about a leadership failure, and critics responded by blaming the customer service line. I wrote about government's failure to preserve its own evidence, and critics want to respond by asking whether the public should pay more to obtain whatever evidence survives. I wrote about systems designed to erase public communications, and one reader decided the real problem was the number and type of records that, quote, people like Jamie Nixon, unquote, are allowed to request. 

At least that commenter was honest. Most proposals to weaken transparency begin with this soft focus language about balance, and efficiency, and protecting essential government services. Eventually, many of them arrive at the same destinations. 

Fewer records, remedies, and fewer people permitted to ask. Less scrutiny, more secrecy. So, to Seattle Times user 744108 and user 1048430, this episode is for you. 

The requesters are not the problem. 

[AI VO] (6:37 - 6:47)

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

[AI VO] (6:55 - 13:21)

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

Today, we are responding to the Seattle Times comment section, which is always a sign that a person's life is going extremely well. Nothing says emotional maturity like spending several days thinking about anonymous people arguing beneath an op-ed, but when you get one published, you tend to look at that stuff, I think. Still, the comments are valuable because they collect nearly every familiar argument against strong public records enforcement into one convenient location. 

These arguments are as familiar to requesters as they are futile in their ability to stand up to basic reason. They sound like this. The requester is too burdensome. 

The tech is too complicated. The penalties are too large, right? These inmate requesters are too scary. 

Records employees are too overwhelmed. The public is too demanding. Transparency is simply too expensive. 

Government apparently is doing its best. It's us pro-democracy types that need to lower our expectations. Now, let me concede something important off the top here. 

User 744108 is right about several things. Government produces vastly more recorded information than it did when Washington's voters adopted initiative 276 in 1972. Email, texting teams, Zoom, SharePoint, OneDrive, Jabber, body cameras, electronic case systems, cloud storage, have all multiplied the places where public business can occur. 

Electronic searches can produce thousands of false positives. One chat thread can continue for years. A single keyword can retrieve irrelevant materials from hundreds of custodians. 

And redactions remain time consuming. All that is true. The professionals are often underpaid, understaffed, and placed in difficult impossible positions. 

And yes, some requests are enormous and some requesters can be difficult. State agencies have some very legitimate resource limitations. Compliance costs money. 

Democracy costs money. All of that is true. None of that, however, answers the most important question. 

Who is responsible for solving these problems? The commenter sees an overwhelmed public records office and looks towards the requester. I see an overwhelmed public records office and look towards leadership. 

Requesters did not select Microsoft 365 or configure their retention system or decide which employees receive which devices. Requesters did not create hundreds of abandoned mailboxes, personal device problems, disconnected review platforms, and folders that can't be searched consistently. Requesters did not tell employees that Teams chats were transitory by default. 

They did not place seven-day timers on public communications or underfund the records office. Requesters did not exclude records managers from technology procurement. Requesters, in short, did not create these problems. 

Government's decision makers did. This is not a requester problem. It is a management problem. 

It is a leadership problem. Frontline records employees often become the shock absorbers for decisions made far above them. Leadership chooses the platform, approves the budget, adopts the policy, and establishes a culture. 

Public records officers and their staff get impossible deadlines, an angry requester, and legal exposure. Then leadership turns and says, look at the burden transparency creates for us. No. 

Look at the burden your leadership created. I have said from the beginning of this show that I am not here to bash, rank, and file public workers. I was one. 

Most government employees are trying to do good work with the time, training, and the tools that they have been given. A records professional buried beneath an impossible caseload deserves help. They deserve better tech, enough co-workers. 

They deserve executives who understand that records management is not merely clerical housekeeping. What they do not need is leadership using their exhaustion as political cover to limit the public's right to know. One of the strangest ideas in these comments that I came across is that real transparency may simply no longer be possible. 

The Public Records Act was written for an analog world, they say. There are too many communications formats and data to look through now. Government moves too quickly. 

The modern information environment is simply too complex. Therefore, the public must simply accept less access. I, and I think most others, thought that this technical revolution we are going through would produce the opposite result. 

I thought search technology would help locate information, not lose it. I thought commonly requested materials would be published online instead of copied repeatedly. I thought that audit logs would definitively establish what happened to a record. 

Instead, government adopted the parts of technology that made governing easier and faster. Instant communications, remote meetings, cloud collaboration, mobile access, disposable chats. Government modernized its ability to communicate and exercise power, but it did not modernize the public's ability to examine that power. 

And now, we have some people telling us that that gap is inevitable. 

[Aaron Cuoio (WaTech)] (13:21 - 13:22)

Get it gone. 

[Nixon] (13:22 - 13:59)

Apparently, government can purchase the software, generate the information, act on the information, and store mountains of it. The unreasonable part begins when someone asks to see it. Government invested more aggressively in creating information than in managing and disclosing it. 

They forgot about the other side of the whole thing. That was and is a choice, not an inevitability. When the accountability system became overloaded, leadership could have expanded capacity. 

Instead, it tried to turn down the accountability by blaming requesters. 

[AI VO] (14:07 - 14:15)

When the public disclosure laws were first passed and everything was analog, much of the expense to comply was put on the people who requested the records. 

[Nixon] (14:15 - 16:48)

The original initiative 276 did allow an agency to recover the reasonable actual cost of making physical copies. It did not authorize agencies to charge for inspection, locating records, or retrieving them. The detailed menu of modern electronic charges came much later. 

And this is important. The cost of paper, toner, or a disk postage is one thing. Charging the public for government's obligation to know what records it has is something quite different. 

If the public pays the salaries, purchases the computers, and licenses the software, right? If it's paying the lawyers funding the decisions to have the record generated in the first place, why should the public then pay admission to inspect it? I mean, by that logic, should I pay a fee whenever a police officer pulls me over, regardless of whether I did anything wrong? 

Maybe the officer could swipe my debit card before asking for my license and registration. You know, a small traffic stop convenience fee. Maybe the body camera upload is extra, dash camera footage carries some kind of customized service charge, you know, surge pricing after midnight or something. 

I don't know. Government does not ordinarily charge a person each time it exercises public authority over them. The lawful operation of government is what taxes are supposed to fund. 

Public access shouldn't be some optional upgrade we get, right? It is part of operating the government lawfully. There is another problem with charging staff time. 

Also, if you think about it, another weird incentive that that creates. The price of accountability would be determined by the quality of the agency's own record keeping. A well-managed agency with searchable systems could find the records cheaply. 

A poorly managed agency with scattered files, undocumented retention, inaccessible exports, and years of neglected information governance could charge a fortune. The worse the government manages the public's information, the more the public would have to pay to examine it at the point of inspection. That is not an incentive to improve. 

User 744108 says in one comment,  

[AI VO] (16:49 - 17:01)

Which would you rather have?Four police department staff members paid just to respond to requests or one public records officer and two more police officers on the streets? Because that's now the choice. 

[Nixon] (17:01 - 23:37)

No, no, that is not the choice. Wow. That hypothetical has the relationship exactly backwards. 

Public records laws are law enforcement statutes. Police officers enforce laws against members of the public. Public records laws help the public enforce the law against police officers and prosecutors and judges, governors, legislators, and every other person entrusted with government power. 

Who enforces the law on law enforcement or determines whether an officer lied in a report? Right? I mean, who discovers whether evidence was withheld or whether discipline was quietly reversed? 

Who investigates the death of someone in government custody or proves that senior officials knew about misconduct and did nothing? That answer frequently begins with the records. Body camera footage, public record. 

Use of force reports, public records. Disciplinary investigations, public records. Records employees are not decorative administrative overhead sitting between the public and real public safety. 

They preserve the evidence through which public safety agencies are held to account. A records office is the evidence room for civil government. Two more officers and no meaningful ability to inspect what they do is not greater public safety. 

Consider a recent case involving the Washington State Patrol. Attorney Joan Mell represented former State Patrol employees in a records dispute concerning communications related to the state's COVID-19 vaccine mandate and employee terminations. The State Patrol agreed to pay $340,000 to resolve allegations it deleted or withheld texts, emails, and other records. 

At the center of the dispute was guidance from Washington State Patrol Chief John Patiste directing that work-related texts and chats be limited to transitory communications and deleted after serving their intended purpose. The settlement ended the dispute without a merits finding that every allegation had been proved, but $340,000 is a rather expensive way to demonstrate that public records compliance is merely unnecessary bureaucracy, right? So user 744108 asks whether we should choose records employees or officers on the street. 

That case demonstrates why we need both. Law enforcement officers carry extraordinary authority. They can stop, search, and arrest us. 

They use force against us, testify against us. Their actions determine whether we lose our jobs, licenses, freedoms, sometimes our lives. The records are not a diversion from law enforcement. 

They protect the legit use of those powers by law enforcement. When police agencies control both the exercise of power and the survival of the evidence documenting that power, transparency is not some luxury. It is the legitimacy lending democratic check on that power. 

Critics like these carefully calculate the cost of disclosing records, but they rarely calculate the cost of government secrecy and the inevitable corruption that inevitably follows. That accountability story that was never written, the misconduct that was never proved. Those losses do not appear as a line item in an agency budget, right? 

There's no invoice for history that disappeared. Let us consider a few records that nearly did disappear and what would have been lost had they done so. Let's talk about those department licensing chats. 

In my last episode, we talked about a July 2nd, 2026 article by Seattle Times state politics reporter, Shauna Sowersby, where she reported department of licensing hearings examiners, administrative law judges, used Microsoft Teams to discuss petitioners, attorneys, hearing tactics, and proposed order language. One judge joked that another could help everyone by hitting an attorney with her car hard enough to put him in the hospital. Again, these are officials exercising adjudicative authority over real people. 

They decide matters involving driver's licenses and other significant interests. They are supposed to operate independently and impartially. Now, five days after that Teams chat occurred on February 17th, 2025, Governor Ferguson suspends the state's seven-day automatic deletion policy. 

Had that suspension not occurred, the deletion clock on that conversation only had a couple days left. Get it gone. Those records survived, one judge was suspended without pay, and the Seattle Times got the story. 

The reporting also revealed later internal communications in which a DOL official asked whether the office could use another auto-deleting transitory communication system such as Jabber. Now think about that. After embarrassing records surfaced, the instinct was not how do we ensure judges communicate professionally, protect impartiality, and restore public trust. 

No. The discussion included whether another auto-deleting communications method might be approved. When disclosure exposes bad conduct, the solution is better conduct, not more disposable evidence. 

That Seattle Times story exists because the records survived, not because Washington had designed a brilliant preservation system. They survived because the statewide policy changed shortly before the auto-deletions did its damage. Saved by timing, mere luck. 

It should not have depended on that luck. 

[Cuoio] (23:38 - 23:38)

Get it gone. 

[Nixon] (23:39 - 23:40)

No, Aaron, that's not what we're doing anymore. 

[AI VO] (23:48 - 23:58)

The Washington State Public Records Act needs to be amended to reduce the number and type of records that people like Jamie Nixon can request, not expanded. 

[Nixon] (23:59 - 25:22)

And that is just a remarkable sentence. This is the argument I examined in episode 16. The idea that government should evaluate whether a requester has legitimate concern, reduce the records that people like Jamie Nixon are permitted to request. 

This is not reform. It's certainly not a reform that is prioritizing what this is all about, which is government transparency. This is an argument that some citizens are too persistent, adversarial, or politically inconvenient to enjoy the same right to inspect their government's work as everyone else. 

Washington's law rejects that principle. Agencies may not distinguish among requesters or require someone to establish an approved purpose before receiving their records. That protection exists for good reason. 

A right that is dependent on the government's opinion of the person exercising it is not much of a right. You don't have to be polite enough or influential or wealthy enough. You don't have to be journalistic or agreeable enough. 

You do not have to persuade the agency that your concern is legitimate. User 1048430 continues. 

[AI VO] (25:23 - 25:33)

If only Jamie's emails and telephone and chat correspondence were subject to the same scrutiny, the public might find out that he isn't doing this in service of better government. 

[Nixon] (25:33 - 27:06)

My private communications are not subject to the Public Records Act because I am not exercising the coercive authority of the state. I do not arrest anyone. I do not issue licenses, adjudicate cases. 

I do not spend appropriated public money, write regulations. I do not use government employees or government hardware or software to make decisions that are binding on to other people. Public records laws are not based on symmetry between the citizen and the state. 

The relationship is intentionally unequal because the power is unequal. Government works for the public, not the other way around. The Public Records Act is not a punishment imposed on public employees. 

It is the condition attached to exercising public power. Both these commenters from the Seattle Times are welcome to scrutinize my public work. They can listen to every episode, read every transcript, inspect every document I publish. 

They can challenge my facts, my motives. They can call me an obsessive asshole if they like. Believe me, it wouldn't be the first time somebody said that. 

None of that changes whether a public record is public. None of it does. The law does not say records become disclosable only when requested by virtuous people of pure hearts. 

And thankful we should all be for that. 

[AI VO] (27:14 - 27:26)

The law has created a cottage industry for people who profit by requesting records, then suing and winning financial judgments when government agencies can't produce the records in the timelines required by law. 

[Nixon] (27:26 - 29:46)

This is another familiar critique or retort or move, whatever. Penalties are sometimes discussed as though a requester submits a request on a Monday and by Friday they're rocking a new Mercedes around the neighborhood. I mean, it's just, that is not how this works. 

To enforce Washington's Public Records Act, a requester must generally sue. There's no statewide transparency police force that arrives, conducts an investigation, orders the agency to comply or bust a check. The requester has to identify the violation, find counsel or represent themselves, file in superior court, deal with motions, and prove the claim and then wait. 

Attorney's fees may be awarded to a prevailing requester. Daily penalties are discretionary and the statutory maximum is $100 for each day access was denied for each record. That maximum is not automatic. 

In my recent Wa Tech case, I proved the agency violated the PRA. The court not only found that violation, but they found it to be a negligent violation. After years of requests, months of litigation, briefings and hearings, the penalty was a monstrous $4,100. 

I'm apparently terrible at this very lucrative cottage industry. I must have missed the orientation. Perhaps the champagne room is hidden behind the records portal somewhere. 

Look, penalties exist because a right without a remedy is nothing but a suggestion. The critics here are reversing the moral order of things, right? I mean, they see a judgment and ask why the requester received money. 

Shouldn't the first question be, why did that citizen have to enforce this law?  

[Al Rose (SAO)]

They want an explanation. We don't have to give them an explanation. 

[Nixon]

Why was litigation required? Why didn't the agency provide the records? Is the system inadequate? 

Why did leadership allow this violation? I mean, why does the public pay the judgment while the officials responsible so often experience no personal consequence? That's a good question.

 [Rose] (29:46 - 29:49)

And I don't know how could you not even realize that? 

[Nixon] (29:49 - 35:07)

It's strange to accuse requesters of profiting from wrongdoing while barely discussing the government conduct that made that judgment possible. Judges aren't the type of people to just go hand and out $100,000 checks to people for nothing. The requester did not impose the penalty. 

A judge did after reviewing evidence and using their discretion under a law enacted by we the people to make government accountable. User 744108 says the Public Records Act was designed for an analog world. Fine. 

Then let's institute reforms. You know, here's a few ideas. Again, just ideas. 

Part of a reform conversation. Some of these will be good. Some maybe aren't. 

Let us build a digital transparency system. Let's create shared regional record services so every small city doesn't have to build its own miniature e-discovery department. Let's provide state grants for compliant retention, search, review, and redaction tools. 

We could require records professionals to participate when agencies purchase communications platforms, helping to ensure their compliance. We need to preserve metadata, establish reliable native exports, and create audit systems showing when records are deleted and by whom. Let us proactively publish high-demand records and already processed public records requests. 

Let's train every government employee that retention follows content and function and not the name of the application. Let us staff records offices as though transparency is an essential government service, since it is. And let us hold executives responsible when they knowingly approve noncompliant systems. 

Let us prohibit content-blind automatic destruction of public communications unless agencies can preserve records according to lawful schedules and immediately suspend destruction for requests and litigation. Those are real authentic reform ideas that put transparency first. Restricting what people like Jamie Nixon or Arthur West may request, that is not reform. 

Charging citizens for government's own disorganization is not reform. Calling every determined requester vexatious is not reform. Deleting faster, expanding privileges, moving embarrassing conversations to Jabber is definitely not reform. 

I mean, that must feel more like retreat or surrender. Even to these critics, you must see this, right? Government advocates carefully tally every employee hour required to disclose a record. 

They almost never tally what the public loses when the record does not exist. The Department of Licensing story that never gets published. The police misconduct that cannot be proved. 

The employee retaliation claim that dies for lack of evidence. These are real human costs. They are simply costs borne by people outside of the agency. 

I guess this just makes them easier for government to ignore. Let me close this up by, you know, addressing user 744108 and user 1048430. God, that's just fun to say. 

You are right. Washington has a modern public records problem. We simply disagree about what that problem is. 

The problem is not that citizens continue asking how government spends their money and exercises authority in their name. The problem is that government adopted a new technological world without building the transparency infrastructure that world required. Government embraced instant communication, collaboration, and mobile access, but chose to neglect preservation, top-of-the-line search tools, and accountability. 

Then, when the bill for that neglect arrives, leadership wants the requesters to pick up the tab. Critics of the Public Records Act almost always begin with the burdensome requester. What about the people's burdened right to know? 

We should begin with Washington's leaders. The new technological era should not require us to surrender genuine transparency. It should allow us to achieve more of it than any generation before us could imagine. 

Government now can communicate faster than ever. It can search, store, and publish more information than ever before. It can do more than ever. 

The public's right to know should expand with that capacity, not shrink under it. Government modernized its ability to exercise power. Now it must modernize our ability to examine that power. 

The requesters are not the problem. Washington's leaders are. 

[AI VO] (35:10 - 36:52)

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 thepublicrecordsofficer.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 non-profit 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.