See Copying Charges for Public Records. State and local government agencies are required by chapter The state agencies records retention schedules and local governments records retention schedules , approved by the state and local records committees, establish the time frames in which records must be retained. As well, individual agencies do have the option of requesting the state or local records committee to approve an agency-specific records retention schedule.
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Note that under RCW Criminal penalties, including fines and imprisonment, can be assessed for the intentional destruction of public records RCW Electronic records can pose unique challenges for agencies related to records retention and the requirements of the PRA. Electronic Records Retention Practice Tips. Use these practice tips to guide your agency's compliance with the PRA and records retention requirements for electronic records.
Some agencies keep all email forever. To learn about approaches that can be taken to address email retention, see Retention of Email and Other Electronic Records.
Practice Tip: When you forward agency-related emails sent and received on your personal email account, you may lose the metadata with a simple forward. Metadata associated with email is a public record and must be produced, if requested. City of Shoreline The City of Shoreline developed tips for how to preserve metadata when an email is forwarded from a personal account to an agency account.
Review these tips with your IT staff and agency attorney.
For further information on how to manage specific types of electronic records, see the Washington State Archives page on Publications and Advice Sheets for Local Governments see section on Electronic Records Management. Below are examples of how some jurisdictions have approached meeting this requirement. While some policies such as Othello's cover the basic policy requirements, others provide some unique approaches such as restricting PRA response times Ilwaco , or providing a system for categorizing requests to facilitate their processing Bainbridge Island.
Supreme Court: State employee birthdates are public record. Federal Way activates new software for public records. When a public records request comes in for records related to a specific employee, must the agency notify the employee whose records have For a public records request: can the agency charge for the cost of a flash drive or other storage media to produce the records? Text Messaging Policies. Social Media Policies. On this Page Hide. Overview The Public Records Act PRA requires that all public records maintained by state and local agencies be made available to all members of the public, with very narrow statutory exemptions.
What Records Are Public? In the motion, you must convince the judge that you have serious privacy or safety concerns that outweigh any public interest in having access to those records. If your motion is granted, the judge can order a whole court file, or a particular document, sealed. If the judge decides that only some of the information in a document should be kept from public access, the judge will protect only that information, not the whole document.
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He or she will order you to prepare a version of the document that blocks out the protected information but leaves the rest available to the public. This will be filed in the court records, along with notice that it is a redacted version. The original document will be sealed. A judge can order documents in a civil case be unsealed if all parties agree, or if you prove that the original reason for sealing the documents no longer exists. If you are involved in a family court or guardianship court action in Washington State, you have some special privacy protections.
These forms can protect you against possible identity theft. They keep the public from seeing some personal identifiers listed below in information that you have to share with the court. These are the personal identifiers that should be sealed from public access in family court matters:.
Your social security number. Your driver license number.
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Your telephone number. Your financial account numbers. This packet includes these forms:. Again, before you buy or use any pattern form, make sure you have the newest version. See Resources below to learn when these forms were last updated and how to get them.
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You will find the date the form was last updated in the lower left corner of the form. Some have the option of filing either electronically or in paper. Others you must file in paper. If you are filing paper copies with the court, you may need to file two copies of the cover sheets with the court clerk. One copy will go in the general court file, which the public may access, to show that the court has received these documents. The other copy, along with your sealed documents, will become part of your sealed file. Check your local court rules or ask the family law facilitator or courthouse facilitator before filing to make sure.
In a family law or guardianship case, you must complete the Confidential Information Form and file it with your petition or response. You also must file the Addendum to Confidential Information Form if you have more than two children, or if there is more than one petitioner or more than one respondent. Your pleadings, such as your Petition for Dissolution or Petition to Modify Child Support , will still be part of the public record. However, you should NOT include personal identifiers when you complete the pattern forms for these pleadings.
Your Confidential Information Form , which does contain these identifiers, will be sealed from public access, including access by your opposing party. Court officials, however, can see this information when they need it. You may also have certain financial documents sealed from the public by completing the Sealed Financial Source Documents Cover Sheet. Documents that may be sealed using this form include the following:. Income tax returns.
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W-2s and schedules. Credit card statements. Financial statements. Check registers. Loan application documents. Retirement plan orders. Other financial information sealed by court order. In many family law cases, people file reports to the court, such as parenting evaluations, domestic violence assessments, risk assessments, Child Protective Services reports, sexual abuse evaluations, and reports from the Guardian ad Litem or Court-Appointed Special Advocate. These reports are filed as two separate documents, one public and one sealed.
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The sealed documents are filed with a cover sheet and include all the details of the evaluation and the reasons for the conclusions. GR 22 does not make you give a residence address the address where you live , but you must give an address where you can be served court papers, and that address will be publicly available. GR 22 and the pattern forms are meant to protect your privacy, but are not designed to protect you from domestic violence.
For example, other parties and their lawyers in your case will be able to look at the documents that you or an evaluator file except the Confidential Information Form and some other court forms. This includes financial source documents and evaluator reports that are sealed under this court rule. Often these documents, such as bank statements, include your residents address.
Therefore, if you are concerned about your safety or the safety of your children, you can redact address information from documents you file under any of the cover sheets included in this packet. If you need an address where you can safely be served court papers, the Address Confidentiality Program ACP may be able to help. The public does not have access to the following family court records:. Confidential Information Form.
Sealed Financial Source Documents. Domestic Violence Information Form. Notice of Intent to Relocate. Vital Statistics Form. Law Enforcement Information Form. Foreign Protection Order Information Form. Sealed Personal Health Care Records.