School district working to settle public records lawsuit

by Jacob Wagner

The Grand Coulee Dam School District will offer $16,000 to a man who filed a lawsuit against them regarding a public records request, and who has reportedly made around a million dollars over the years with similar lawsuits against small school districts, towns, hospital districts and other such agencies.

The GCDSD board of directors on Monday approved offering the settlement to Eric Hood, who filed suit in February of 2022 saying that the school district had not provided all documents related to a public records request he had made in February of 2021.

Hood has collected about $820,000 in similar lawsuits brought against school districts, small towns, and others over about a 10-year span, according to a 2020 article in The Leader in Port Townsend, Washington.

“We need to approve it,” Superintendent Paul Turner told the school board. “There’s not much more I can say. One of the things I will say is, once it is all said and done, we’ve talked before about going to [the Washington State School Directors Association] and really working on this; I think we need to.”

Board Director Rich Black agreed.

The proposed agreement also says that the district will release emails from the superintendent and district business manager from between Jan. 1, 2020 and July 1, 2020 that include the search term “audit.”

The San Juan Public Health District last year issued a press release explaining their experience with Hood:

“On January 5, 2020, our District received a request from Eric Hood stating that ‘I learned that your organization was recently audited by the state auditor,’ and ‘May I have all records it got from the auditor and all records of any response to the audit or to the audit report, including any changes or planned changes to policies or practices?’

“This request did not identify a specific record and could have been denied. Instead, the District released its three most recent audit reports, which include the district’s response to the audit, and asked the requester to provide clarification on what was specifically desired. The requestor responded it was audit 1023513, which we had provided.

“The District took this as confirmation that he had received the requested report. He did not ask for a more detailed response, set of records, or indicate dissatisfaction in any way.

“During the last week before the statute of limitations on public records lawsuits ran out, the requester filed a lawsuit against the District alleging that we did not comply with his request. The District has opted to settle this lawsuit for $15,000.”

Commissioner Everett Clary said in the statement, “Initially we wanted to fight, but it would have cost us more to litigate it, and it would have cost the public two to three times the amount of money to prove we were right. It’s public money, and we want to treat it respectfully.”

Commissioner Trish Lehman added, “I too would want to fight this, but the cost in public money was just not worth it.”

Moses Lake and Lake Chelan school districts are among many school districts listed as having had similar lawsuits filed against them by Hood, while Soap Lake, Twisp, and Republic are listed as some of several towns against which Hood had also filed lawsuits.