There’s enough blame to go around after the county’s recent $15,000 settlement with the Freedom Foundation for failing to respond to a public-records request.

That payment to the Olympia-based advocacy group, made to avoid a lawsuit under the state’s Public Records Act, was a waste of money.

The Foundation’s request, faxed to the county in January, requested immediate acknowledgement. The county failed to provide it.

Six months later, without a single word further from the Foundation, that group sought and received its settlement. The records requested had nothing to do with any possible wrongdoing by the county or its employees.

County Commissioner Rick Hannold sounded a bit naive when he discussed the matter recently. He claimed that either the fax machine was broken, so that the fax was never received, or the fax got lost among the hundreds the county gets. Some organized system for receiving and logging in public-records requests is clearly needed and could easily be put into place.

Hannold also insisted that because the county did not provide the requested immediate acknowledgement, the Foundation should have followed up, and that its failure to do so would have exonerated the county in court, had it come to that. That feels like shirking responsibility.

On the other hand, the Foundation’s failure to eventually follow up on its request smacks of a set-up. If it really wanted the information, and only the information, why didn’t it ask again? Sitting on its hands and then pouncing half a year later with the threat of a lawsuit seems low.

A photo on the Foundation’s website, showing its staff gleefully displaying an oversized replica of Island County’s $15,000 settlement check, seems like gloating. It also seems to wrongly suggest some sort of culpability by the county.

The Foundation crusades against public-sector unions and champions prohibiting “taxpayers’ money from being unwillingly used to influence the political system,” according to its website. How did extracting money from Island County further those objectives?

We don’t think the county did anything wrong. It was just inept.

The Freedom Foundation, on the other hand, was vindictive.

And mean people suck.