Washington State Employees (2019 - 2022)
It is a clone of this request.
| Submitted | Nov. 9, 2022 |
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Communications
From: Ben Goehring
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Washington Public Records Act, I hereby request the following records:
Monthly electronic listings of all employees of the Washington Executive Branch from January 1, 2019 to July 31, 2022. Specifically, I am seeking electronic listings of all individuals employed within the offices of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor and all state agencies, commissions, and departments for each month from January 1, 2019 to July 31, 2022.
For each month, I’m seeking a spreadsheet, database, or delimited text file(s) — not paper records or a PDF created from data — with the following fields for each employee: full legal name, unique employee identification code, title, department or agency, race, gender, full-time/part-time status, location, hire date, termination date, civil service status, and gross annual salary. If you cannot produce any of these fields, please let me know and generate only the available variables.
If these data are not available at monthly intervals, please produce the datasets at the most frequent interval possible. For example, if the data is not available monthly, please produce the data at quarterly intervals.
In addition, please include any lookup tables that may be needed to interpret the data. For example, if departments are listed with codes linked to a separate table, I will be happy to join the records myself, rather than require your staff to do so.
I am comfortable working with large data sets and can receive the records in a variety of formats (.dbf, .csv, .mdb, etc).
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
Ben Goehring
From: Office of Financial Management
We received your request (attached). Under the Public Records Act, chapter 42.56 RCW, I reply on behalf of the Office of Financial Management. This request has been assigned number PRR 125.
You have requested a list of names, and so I must ask you to sign and return a commercial purpose form, which I have attached. I will need you to describe your purpose with enough detail that we can determine whether this request is for a commercial purpose. Please note that under Washington law, commercial purpose is broadly defined, can apply to a non-profit organization, and “includes a business activity by any form of business enterprise intended to generate revenue or financial benefit.” SEIU Healthcare 775NW v. Dep't of Soc. & Health Servs., 193 Wn. App. 377, 403, 377 P.3d 214 (2016).
Once I have your form, and we are satisfied this is not for a commercial purpose, I will need to provide notice to all employees. Based on the number of requests we are currently processing, as well as past experience giving statewide notice, I estimate that we can provide responsive records by March 10, 2023.
I would like to request several redactions. I would like to redact employees we have identified as victims of domestic violence/stalking/harassment either because they are members of the state’s Address Confidentiality Program or because they have otherwise provided us with information to our satisfaction.
I would also like to request redaction of the Department of Transportation Ferry employees. Federal law prohibits the release of names of persons who have unsecured access to a vessel. It is difficult for us to determine exactly which individuals in our ferry system have that access. You can make this request to the Department of Transportation and they can more easily determine which employees should be redacted. https://wsdot.wa.gov/about/contacts/public-disclosure
Finally, I would like to redact State Patrol employees since we do not release the names of undercover officers and it is difficult for us to determine exactly who at the State Patrol is an undercover officer. Again, you can make this request to the State Patrol and they can more easily determine which employees should be redacted. https://wsp.govqa.us/WEBAPP/_rs/(S(g4yjvqvu5utqbtq3yqxfanc2))/SupportHome.aspx
Would you be amenable to these additional redactions?
We do not disclose gender or race.
RCW 42.56.250: Employment and licensing. (wa.gov)<https://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=42.56.250>
Based on the nature of your request and the number of other requests we are currently handling, I estimate we can provide responsive records, should we hold any, by March 10, 2023. This anticipated date is only an estimate and may need to be revised as we process your request.
It is OFM policy to charge the following for producing records: $0.15 per page for photocopied or printed documents, $0.10 per page scanned into an electronic format, $0.05 per each four electronic records produced electronically, and the actual cost of any storage device, delivery charge, or postage. If the total estimated cost of providing records is under $5.00 we will not charge any fee.
If OFM will be charging you a fee to produce records responsive to your request, we will notify you of the fees owed and will produce the responsive records upon receipt of a down payment, or upon receipt of payment for the first installment if records are produced on an installment basis. If OFM does not receive payment within 30 days of notifying you we will close your request.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss this request further, please feel free to contact me at 360-870-8731 or at publicdiscloure@ofm.wa.gov<mailto:publicdiscloure@ofm.wa.gov>.
Thank you,
From: Ben Goehring
Thank you for your quick response! All of these redactions sound good to me. It does not appear that the commercial purpose form got though -- could you please resend it?
Thanks,
Ben
From: Office of Financial Management
My apologies. Here you are.
From: Ben Goehring
Hi there,
The commercial purpose declaration form is too large to share here, so you can access it via this link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/atlqma5wq9eb5miz5palb/h?dl=0&rlkey=gkd7hn7rfrkon5lpysn0ohzu7
Please let me know if you cannot access it or there are other issues.
Thanks!
Ben
From: Office of Financial Management
I did get your commercial purpose declaration form.
In reviewing your request with our State Human Resources team, we noted that this a very large amount of information that you are asking for. Producing 42 separate records of state employees information, we will need more time than we had originally anticipated.
We wanted to note that we would provide annual salary but not gross annual salary since we cannot determine gross annual salary on a month by month basis.
To reduce the number of records required to respond to this request would you be willing to accept records on a quarterly or biannual basis rather than monthly? If so we may be able to reduce the time it will take to respond to this request. Currently we are looking at April 28, 2023.
Thank you.
From: Ben Goehring
Quarterly is fine -- thank you! That is just fine with the salary data too.
Best,
Ben
From: Office of Financial Management
Good morning.
Mr. Goehring, is it possible for you to provide me with your personal email address so that I can send your list? I am ready to release it. You can email me directly here at this address as well, publicdisclosure@ofm.wa.gov<mailto:publicdisclosure@ofm.wa.gov>.
Please respond as soon as possible.
Thank you.
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