Newspaper sues city for Lynch report access
The Spokesman-Review sued the city of Spokane on Friday, alleging that it improperly refused to release details of an internal affairs report regarding Deputy Mayor Jack Lynch.
Earlier this month, the city refused a public records request for the six-page report concerning Lynch because of “privacy concerns,” according to documents filed Dec. 29.
“It is our belief that the public’s right to know the nature of the allegations and the outcome of the investigation outweighs any right to privacy on the part of the city’s deputy mayor,” Editor Steven A. Smith said in an e-mail. “Absent release of the findings, how can citizens judge for themselves whether the parties involved have upheld the public’s interests?”
In a Dec. 5 response to the newspaper, City Attorney James Craven said disclosing the city’s investigation into the “anonymous, unsubstantiated false rumors” would violate Lynch’s privacy.
The lawsuit was filed by Cowles Publishing Co., which owns the newspaper.
On Sept. 28, reporters Bill Morlin and Karen Dorn Steele wrote a story linking Lynch’s medical leave to “increasing questions about recent visits to a city park known for lewd conduct and drug abuse.”
Lynch returned in October and expressed anger at the newspaper’s coverage. At the time, he accused the newspaper of throwing “a wider net and a wider net in an attempt to come up with more that is just not there.”
Lynch could not be reached for comment on Friday, according to the mayor’s staff. A staff attorney for the city declined to comment.
The top appointed administrator at City Hall, Lynch is the city’s chief liaison with the Police Department.
“If we’ve learned anything from events of the last several years, it is the vital importance of full public disclosure when an official’s job performance is called into question,” Smith said. “Deputy Mayor Lynch may choose to make this a personal issue. But it is our view that it is, entirely, a public issue.”
In responding to records requests from the newspaper – which were filed under the state Public Records Act – the mayor’s office reported in September that police officers had seen two vehicles registered to Lynch at High Bridge Park on Aug. 11 and 18.
Lynch said he was checking on police patrols to make sure the department was getting control of the problems at High Bridge Park, which includes an area known as People’s Park in west Spokane. A string of e-mails among Lynch, the city parks director and police officials document his interest in the enforcement effort.
According to the lawsuit, the Police Department denied that its internal affairs unit had investigated the deputy mayor.
However, the newspaper’s attorneys noted in the lawsuit, the city later rejected the newspaper’s public records request by arguing that the release of the report would violate Lynch’s privacy.
The newspaper asked that the city pay its legal costs, as well as $100 for each day that the reporters were denied the right to inspect or copy the records.
In October 2006, the city apologized for illegally withholding about 90 public documents related to the River Park Square parking garage in the 1990s. In that case, the city agreed to pay $299,000 to journalist Tim Connor, Camas Magazine and its publishers for refusing to release the documents.