Why should every one of you, whether you are interested in technology or not, be interested in what is going on with our publicly owned fiber-optic resources? Because it is a story that exemplifies how secretive, evasive, and corrupt our institutions are. Let’s look at the Public Records Act and those public records requests for information.

For years, the City of Bellingham’s (COB) Public Works Department has used, abused, and even violated the Washington Public Records Act to protect special interests and obscure information. Years ago, I had a conversation with city attorney James Erb about the COB’s track-record responding to public records requests. We didn’t agree on everything, but we did agree that COB staff should simply start talking to each other more and answering questions. Instead, they are wasting everyone’s time and money by forcing public record requests. These requests are expensive and often less than informative, as there are a million ways for the COB to pretend that they don’t have a “responsive record” or don’t know what you’re asking for. In short, while the Public Records Act is intended to provide transparency, the COB, PUD, Port, and other institutions often use it to obfuscate, knowing that most average citizens simply don’t possess the skills to fill out a request correctly.

Former public works directors Eric Johnston and Ted Carlson both used the Act to protect special interests. Carlson got caught providing different responses to two respondents who were asking for the same information on AT&T. This is a violation of the Act and part of the reason he is now a former public works director. Johnston used it to stonewall against questions, requests for information, and as a delaying tactic, until he was fired.

The COB staff, on the other hand, are masters of not responding to the public and bullying elected officials. They seem to believe the mayor and council work for them and not the citizens. Unfortunately, so far at least, they have been right. Every mayor and council in the last 14 years that I’ve been here has been afraid or unable to direct COB staff in a productive manner.

Given this type of customer oriented climate, I was not surprised  when I asked them for information about the health of our emergency communications systems, including backup systems, and Public Works stonewalled, telling me to submit multiple public records requests. I have done so and am waiting on the responses. More than likely, they will confirm what we already know: they have no idea what is going on under their own roof, there are not adequate safety measures in place for our emergency communications systems, and they can’t or won’t confirm what is going on at the private facility that virtually all our emergency communications services run through. This records request process will probably take several months.

Public Works has also made it clear that they do NOT understand what the Mount Vernon Open Access model for broadband is. Let me enlighten you readers in a couple of sentences. Open Access is a policy. It gives us access to excess capacity on existing and future public fiber networks via leases; these existing networks were once described as “robust” by a former public works director so future networks should be even more robust. The model they used was outlined by retired Mount Vernon Internet Services Director Kim Kleppe to the BAG (Broadband Advisory Group) years ago as a possible model for us to use. Tragically, this option was removed from consideration in the final report even though using this model would generate income for the city and for the network. That final report was written and submitted by WAVE executive Melissa Miller and Uptown Communications. The omission was certainly intentional as Mount Vernon has one of the most successful networks in the U.S. And they are right next door. But the big telecom members of the BAG don't like it, or want it, or didn’t really pay attention, so they are not going to have it here. End of report.

Why does this matter? Well the default response Public Works gives to the public now is that the big telecom biased BAG’s “report” determined that public networks were too expensive, but they only considered the fully municipal model and their numbers are questionable. My question is, how can gaining access to our existing resources be too expensive, especially if it's based on a model being used successfully right next door to us?

It’s really this simple: Open Access works in Mount Vernon, so Johnston, Miller, Uptown and other special interests, in a move to protect big-telecom’s presence in Bellingham, simply removed it as an option. Of course we could have hired a reputable group to do our study and write a report, someone like the Benton Institute, the institute that does broadband studies for Chattanooga, or even just someone who had taken a course in statistics somewhere along the line and couldn’t be “bought.” But that isn’t what big telecom wanted. They wanted someone that would manipulate the books and that’s what they got, at a cost of over $100K. In short, the BAG “report” is invalid in every sense of the word including the statistics and sample sizes used in the study. The Benton Institute would have rejected it as would any reputable statistician.    

I’ll let you know what responses I get from the COB as they answer my Public Records Requests.