News

Here We Go Again

Yet Another Closed Task Force

by Josh Feit

Fortunately, it looks like citizen activist Chris Clifford is at it again as well. Last May, Clifford successfully sued Seattle in King County Superior Court after the city convened an array of private task force meetings (including the city council-approved Citizen Task Force on racial profiling). Last week, Clifford sent a letter to Sims demanding that the committee's work be declared null and void. "It's really simple," Clifford says of his letter. "We expect government to stop this garbage of meeting in private. All I'm asking is for the government to obey the law."

According to Clifford's August 20 letter, the Sims-appointed Inquest Procedures Review Committee (convened to recommend modifications to the county's inquest process) did not publish notice of all their meetings, did not provide agendas to the public 24 hours in advance of those meetings, and held some of the meetings behind closed doors. At issue is the 1971 law mandating that when "the people's business" is being conducted, the meetings must be open to the public.

Sims denies that the meetings were closed to the public and--using the same spent argument that the city of Seattle used when it lost to Clifford in King County Superior Court last May--Sims wrote in a September 5 letter that the Inquest Procedures Review Committee is not the "governing body," and therefore doesn't fall under the requirements of the Open Meetings Act. (The committee sent written recommendations to Sims' office on June 5.)

Good luck in court, Ron.

josh@thestranger.com