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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 14, 2016)
4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2016 Ilwaco limits staff time spent on information requests By KATHERYN HOUGHTON EO Media Group ILWACO, Wash — The City of Ilwaco has limited the time public employees will spend responding to public records requests after receiv- ing an unusually high number of public disclosure requests from one person, During a regular Jan. 1 meeting, the city coun- cil unanimously passed an amendment to their public disclosure policy to include a limit on public records re- quests work of 22 hours per month. According to the amend- ment, the monthly cap is in- tended to ensure that requests won’t “interfere excessively with the City’s essential func- tions.” City Attorney Heather Reynolds said that once the amendment goes into effect on Saturday, city staff will spend a maximum of 22 hours a month responding to records requests. If a request comes in after workers have hit the lim- it, it will be set aside until the next month. If city staff have not completed an in-progress request by the time they hit their cap, they will put it on hold until the next month. Reynolds said while the amendment could delay ac- cess to public records, it is legal. “Some (people) have hi- jacked the original purpose of providing free and public information,” Reynolds said during the meeting. Pushing for rules Under the Washington State Public Records Act, state and local governments “Open Government and agencies must Resource Manual,” make most records agencies without available to the a full-time public public. All Wash- UHFRUGV RI¿FHU DUH ington cities are required to provide required to have a the “fullest assis- policy that explains tance” to requesters how they will re- and respond to re- spond to public quests in the “most disclosure requests timely possible” to comply with the Mike way. law. Cassinelli “ Tw e n t y - t w o According to a memo from Reynolds re- hours is less than most other garding proposed changes to cities allocate, but then Ilwa- the city’s disclosure policy, co is smaller than most oth- VWDWHODZGRHVQRWGH¿QHKRZ er cities and provides water much time cities must spend and sewer services as well as working on records requests. traditional municipal func- However, in previous legal tions,” Reynolds wrote in the battles over public records, memorandum. According to Reynolds’ judges have ruled that a city’s size and staff responsibilities PHPRUDQGXP FLW\ RI¿FLDOV to the public can affect pol- tried to develop a policy to deny requests that “... appear icy. According to the Wash- to be for unsavory purposes, ington Attorney General’s such as extortion or retribu- tion.” However, Reynolds said that policy would be un- lawful, so it wasn’t included in the amendment. Reynolds also told city council members that they could not create a tax on pub- lic records requests, though state law allows them to charge for hard copies. According to Cassinel- li, the majority of requests came from llwaco resident Ryan Crater, a citizen who criticized Cassinelli’s per- formance during the fall and recently announced a future campaign for an Ilwaco City Council seat. “We did this because of the harassment that came from one person,” Cassinelli ([SHQVLYH¿JKWV In an interview after the said. In a phone interview, Cra- meeting, Ilwaco Mayor Mike Cassinelli said council passed WHUVDLGKHDQGKLVZLIH¿OHG the amendment because a re- multiple requests in prepara- FHQW ÀXUU\ RI UHTXHVWV KDYH tion for his upcoming cam- overwhelmed city employ- paign. “It’s not harassment for HHVPDNLQJLWGLI¿FXOWWRDW- tend to their other duties. me to ask for public docu- Between Oct. 1 and Dec. ments,” Crater said. “The 31, the city received nine city has responsibility under records requests. City doc- state law to provide public uments recorded that the documents. As a citizen, this search for public records is our government and we since October has cost the should have access to our city city $6,000. documents.” 3RUWODQGGRFNZRUNZDQHVEXWSD\GRHVQ¶W Elvis Ganda, the head of terminal operator ICTSI Or- egon, said the company hires for just 30 eight-hour shifts a PORTLAND — You work, month now — down from 500 you get paid. You don’t work, jobs a week before February. That means longshore work- you still get paid. It’s a deal that helped long- ers are doing 1 percent of the shore union members at the work they were doing before. But dock worker pay at the Port of Portland collect more than a million dollars in salaries Port of Portland barely took a last year, even as cargo contain- hit. The International Long- HUWUDI¿FDOPRVWJURXQGWRDKDOW shore and Warehouse Union has a pay guarantee plan and workloads fell fast. The longshore union has that assures many longshore UHDSHG WKH EHQH¿WV IRU GH- workers will be paid for near- cades of a port-supported fund ly a full week of work at near- that pays members whether or ly four times minimum wage, not they work. During a lock- regardless of how much work out at the Port of Portland’s there is to do. Union advocates say the grain terminal in 2013, the fund paid $1 million over the SODQJLYHVPHPEHUV¿QDQFLDO course of a year — while no certainty in a business that can HEEDQGÀRZRYHUWLPH work was going on at all. But critics of the longshore Terminal 6, Portland’s container port and the former union say the plan is why lifeblood of the state’s small union members aren’t work- and medium-sized exporting ing with the port operator to industry, now receives a sin- bring shipping lines back to gle ship per month. Between Terminal 6. “It’s not much in- April and July, the container centive to go back to work,” Ganda said. terminal had no work at all. By MOLLY HARBARGER The Oregonian Without the union on ERDUGSRUWRI¿FLDOVVD\EULQJ- ing Portland’s direct ties to Asia and Europe back is a hard sell. Greg Borossay, a general manager of the Port’s marine trade development, said that ongoing litigation between the Port of Portland, the union and ICTSI Oregon doesn’t necessarily need to be resolved to bring interest- ed carriers back, but a work- force with a history of slow- downs could hurt Terminal 6’s chances. “It would certainly be helpful if the labor issue could be fully resolved,” Borossay said at an Oregon Board of Agriculture meeting in De- cember. The Portland chapter of the union has been found guilty by the federal labor board and judges several times in the past few years of intentionally slowing work on the docks at the container terminal, mak- ing threats to ICTSI Oregon RI¿FLDOVDQGRWKHUXQIDLUODERU practices. Hanjin Shipping Co. and Hapag-Lloyd both stopped calling at Terminal 6 in the midst of a West Coast- wide slow down, but the Port or Portland issue started be- fore and likely will continue long after other ports are back to normal. The International Long- shore and Warehouse Union did not respond to repeated re- quests for comment. In 2013, a union spokeswoman said the pay guarantee plan is nec- essary for workers who have families and mortgages to survive during disagreements with the port. 7KH 3DFL¿F 0DULWLPH $V- sociation, which represents 29 West Coast container port operators, maintains the pay guarantee fund and each port contributes based on the tons of cargo going in and out. That means the ports in the Puget Sound and in Los An- geles are heavily subsidizing the lack of work in Portland. In 2014, the fund paid out just over $600,000 to Oregon longshore workers in total, Mark Graves/The Oregonian Portland longshore workers paid $1.2 million to not work at Port of Portland. with Portland workers aver- aging less than one day of pay without work over the year, DFFRUGLQJWRWKH3DFL¿F0DU- itime Association’s annual report. Last year, the 426 eligible longshore workers in Portland exceeded that total by August. The full 2015 tally will be released in a few weeks, and will likely climb much high- HUWKDQWKHPLOOLRQ¿JXUH racked up as of the end of September. Longshore workers are Need help getting health insurance by Jan. 31? Get free local help! SHOP + ENROLL, OREGON! 503 -325- 0 1 54 503- 440-3909 5 03- 861- 0728 CLATSOP H EA LTH .CO M DUGANINS.CO M IN S U RAN C ESTO RES.CO M hired in batches, when a ship is pulling into port. They load and unload containers, which are then sent by truck, train or EDUJH HOVHZKHUH WR EH ¿OOHG and returned. Usually, unions use mem- bers’ dues to create their own contingency funds for strikes and downtimes. The ILWU negotiated the pay guarantee fund into its contract with the port operators as early as 1971, according to previous reporting from The Orego- nian/OregonLive.
