1. Yeah, now the lower court can raise it to $15.50 a day.

Sims states, "the county has corrected the shortcomings that gave rise to the case."

Translation: "We now simply make damn sure that we destroy everything as quickly as possible and/or never admit that we had it in the first place."

Posted by: MJC on February 6, 2007 11:50 AM

2. Reminds me of a certain Traffic Study requested under the PDA relating to a massive development out our way. The county couldn't hand over a nicely-bound report as anyone would have expected, even though the project would eventually result in 10,000 new residents to the area. Instead, our expert was invited down to DDES to go through boxes of documents that were made available to him. The county provided no help or assistance in locating relevant documents and certainly no help in piecing together the complete analysis.

When our expert finally pieced together as much of the study as he could, the county then refused to fill in the gaps or even acknowledge that they had data that filled in the gaps, which included even the refusal to state in writing that they didn't have the data that was missing.

This was under Ron Sims' leadership. Oh, and when Sims himself admitted in writing that the study in question was bogus, what did he do but allow DOT to do an equally bogus "do over" and refuse to allow public hearings or review.

At least I can say I didn't vote to enable this corruption in Sims County.

Maybe in 20 years Armen will have ratcheted up the penalty, but no court in this state will ever punish King County for its wrongdoing. They're too busy rewriting the constitution and stealing away more and more individual rights.

Posted by: MJC on February 6, 2007 12:04 PM

3. Let me guess the penalties are paid for by the taxpayer. If this is the case then no wonder Simms and Company have no problem with non-compliance after all it isn't their money being spent. If only the law would fine say Simms salary then maybe we would see some real change.

Posted by: TrueSoldier on February 6, 2007 12:11 PM

4. TrueSoldier @ 3,

I think you summed it up pretty well, pardner: as long as it's taxpayer money, it doesn't matter to the "ruling elite."

Posted by: Libertarian on February 6, 2007 01:22 PM

5. Sit back, relax and watch Seattle become Moscow. They know what's best for us.

Posted by: Jeff B. on February 6, 2007 01:44 PM

6. the county has corrected the shortcomings that gave rise to the case

No kidding? When did Sims leave?

Posted by: Tyler Durden on February 6, 2007 03:26 PM

7. You guys are just jealous because your not sleeping with Patty Murray.

Posted by: Walters on February 6, 2007 03:43 PM

8. Stefan,I don't think you will have all your information by 2008. Let me know when you file the next lawsuit!

Posted by: George on February 6, 2007 06:55 PM

9. I'd like to thank all of you for your current and past comments and support. And to let you know I've been contacted by Dori Monson's producer and may be on his show on Wednesday, February 7. (They wanted to interview me today on the air, but I wasn't available.)

My lawyers and I are considering what this ruling means, as it's not clear what the implications are, other than that it is favorable to me. How favorable is unclear.

If you haven't seen the opinion and/or both the Time and P-I articles in today's (Tuesday's) papers, you can quickly get to all those items by going to the last 3 posts at my blog - www.Yousoufian.blogspot.com . Text and/or links are there.

I also just posted the below as a comment following the P-I article, which allows for comments (please post a comment there as well?):

"This latest court decision is the fifth court victory since the original King County Superior Court trial in 2001, followed by previous appeals that went to this same Court of Appeals, then the state Supreme Court, then back to King County Superior Court for the first remand, followed by this latest appeal back to the Court of Appeals, with favorable and improved verdicts at every stage.

Still, it will have been 10 years this May since I originally requested the documents I sought, and King County never disgorged all we know they have, with the first judge allowing that result (original 31 page opinion is at my website).

It's a disappointment that Seattle's two major daily papers have not reported on the discoveries of taxpayer funded, seemingly obviously "rigged" studies contained in the documents I uncovered. The documents King County produced in 2001 (only after I sued them) more than suggest, in my opinion, that public officials ordered studies skewed in advance to be used to knowingly mislead the public to influence the outcome of the June, 1997 statewide public vote on the football stadium subsidies (and the authorization to demolish the Kingdome when the new stadium could have been sited on the north parking lot and the Kingdome could have been kept as a multi-purpose meeting, convention, sports and parking facility to supplement the two specialized sports stadiums. That would have, for instance, guaranteed we'd continue to have "final four" basketball tournaments in Seattle every 4 years)."

Armen Yousoufian
www.Yousoufian.blogspot.com
www.ArmenYousoufian.com

Posted by: Armen Yousoufian on February 6, 2007 11:50 PM

10. Armen: I sure hope King County has to pay your legal fees, which must be monumental!

Posted by: katomar on February 7, 2007 12:16 AM

11. In response to the above comment: the legal fees have been "monumental" - over $400K to date. The first judge only awarded barely half of the fees and costs ($89K awarded vs. $150K incurred - all detailed in her 31 page opinion available at my website: www.ArmenYousoufian.com ), and the original $25K penalty award (based on the minimum $5 per day fine in the statute) didn't cover the difference (i.e. total award, with penalties, was $114K, with legal costs alone at $150K - a $36K difference). Four years later, after going through the Court of Appeals and the state Supreme Court and back to King County Superior Court before a new judge on the first remand hearing, the penalty was increased by enough to cover the earlier difference, plus all but $10K of the subsequent more than $200K in legal fees were awarded. But that was a huge risk we took and 4 years of litigation to get to that point. This is all part of why it is very daunting, based on anyone looking at my case so far, and which has gone on for nearly 10 years, to consider suing when an agency denies access to documents and even claims, as King County did, that the records don't even exist (which was not true, as even the first trial judge ruled and stated in her 31 page opinion). And the later rulings never made up for the initial "haircut" in the legal fee awarded by the first judge vs the fees incurred - that simply came out of the fine, if you will, which is not how it's supposed to work. The Act says you get the records (I still don't have them all), plus penalties/fines if the law was violated (which was found to be the case and even King County eventually admitted that in their own briefs) AND you get to recover your legal fees and costs - not have to pay them out of the fines.

Posted by: Armen Yousoufian on February 7, 2007 09:24 AM

12. Armen, thanks for what you do in holding this slimball demoncrap accountable to the people.

He is truely the biggest crook in King County.

Posted by: GS on February 7, 2007 04:43 PM

13. I believe as a result of Armen Yousoufian's recent victory before the Court of Appeals, I ended getting the entire Mayor Nickels "Nickels Notes" email newsletter subscriber list of 3,448 first and last names, city, state, zip, email addresses and business and home telephone numbers as well as home addresses when the latter three fields were voluntarily disclosed by the subscriber.

Before the court ruling was announced, I was told that I would only get people's first and last names and their email addresses because the rest of the information would be an invasion of privacy even though that information was provided voluntarily and in fact in some cases can be found in other public records like voter registration, property tax and marriage records, or one's listing in Classmates.

Keith "Bad Boy" Gormezano

Posted by: Keith "No-No-Boy" Gormezano on February 8, 2007 11:29 PM

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