Asking the South Whidbey School District for public records comes with a new price tag these days — your name, the information sought and the time and cost to fulfill the request posted for all the world to see on the district’s website.

Beginning late last month, such details were included in a specially created document linked to online school board agendas.

The move comes in the wake of years of litigation with a single Clinton man, a former teacher who officials say has cost the district hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and who has besieged administrators with what school leaders characterize as broad and time-consuming information requests.

Top district officials deny the online posting policy is retaliatory, but rather is meant to keep the school board informed about the burden requests, both legitimate and superfluous, place on employees.

“It’s really just to give the board the transparency of knowing where staff is spending its time and resources,” said Jo Moccia, district superintendent.

School board members add, however, that there are problems with the state’s Open Public Records Act, specifically that its lack of limitations make it ripe for abuse.

Making public who is asking for documents and the cost to district taxpayers, is a way to address the issue. Those with reasonable requests have nothing to hide, they say.

“I find it to be the perfect response … If someone has a legitimate request they should own it,” Director Linda Racicot said.

“We’re just making people responsible,” echoed Director Rocco Gianni, a board member and an advocate for the inclusion of such information online.

“With rights come responsibility,” he said.

Legal expenses

The move is tied into ongoing litigation with Eric Hood, whose employment contract was not renewed by the district in 2010. Hood sued, claiming he was let go without cause and later sued again for alleged public records violations. He is presently fighting two separate battles with the school district, one in U.S. District Court and another in Island County Superior Court.

Most recently, he filed suit against Langley and Mayor Fred McCarthy in Island County Superior Court for alleged public records act violations. McCarthy is Moccia’s predecessor and was school district superintendent in 2010 when Hood’s contract was not renewed.

Hood declined to be interviewed for this story, or the story about his lawsuit with McCarthy.

Racicot, Gianni and Moccia also declined to talk about the ongoing litigation, but each noted that the cost of such legal battles and complying with records requests over the past four years has been expensive and played a role in the decision to create a special document highlighting who is making requests and their cost.

The exact figure remains unclear, but according to Moccia, the district’s legal bills are “in the neighborhood of $400,000.”

“That’s not all one case, but much of it is Hood,” she said.

The legal budget for the 2014-2015 school year alone is $175,000, all of which is general fund money that could otherwise be directed toward students.

An old problem

South Whidbey’s challenges with the state’s record laws are nothing new, as small junior taxing districts and large municipalities alike have grappled with the problem for years.

While most are able to keep up with the demand placed on resources, in rare and extreme cases it’s led some public agencies to near collapse. The tiny Eastern Washington town of Mesa considered bankruptcy or disincorporation in 2009 after a judge ruled it had violated the state’s records laws, according to the Seattle Times. Fines made up nearly one-third of the town’s annual budget, the newspaper reported.

It’s enough of an issue that in 2012 the Legislature considered a bill to limit the reach of the open public records act and lessen the burden on struggling governments. Among its sponsors was Mary Margaret Haugen, the former and longtime state senator in District 10.

Open government advocates objected, saying the proposal would dull the effectiveness of the records act to the benefit of government officials.

The bill was not passed.

S.  Whidbey’s solution

While legislative changes have yet to occur, South Whidbey school officials say they aren’t alone in their decision to publicly identify requestors.

The district has had the policy framework in place since early 2014 but only moved forward after Gianni suggested they use the same reporting form as the Monroe School District. Also, it waited until district attorneys had confirmed the practice was legal and didn’t breech state privacy laws.

Officials with the Coupeville and Oak Harbor school districts did confirm that neither identifies people who make records requests, but that they aren’t afflicted with large and numerous records requests.

“If we get four in a year, that’s a lot,” said Janet Wodjenski, public records officer for Coupeville. “Some years we don’t get any at all.”

She added that she could see how someone with a “bee in their bonnet” could create a large workload and that she doesn’t see any problem with including such information in online board agendas because of the possible impacts to district business.

Lance Gibbon, superintendent in Oak Harbor, didn’t weigh in on whether such a practice was appropriate, but he did say he can see how large requests could be problematic.

Despite few requests, last year an out-of-state company asked for information concerning district supply orders for commercial purposes. It amounted to 54,000 pages of records, all of which had to be reviewed by an employee.

“It took one person five days of work,” Gibbon said.