Sound Transit questioned about release of 173k private emails

Lawmakers met for the second time in two weeks Thursday to look into controversy around Sound Transit 3 and the improper release of customer emails to a political coalition.

“Mistakes were made,” Sound Transit Communications Director Craig Davidson told senators.

Legal expert: Sound Transit 3 procedure violated constitution

The Senate Law and Justice Committee work session in Everett targeted the release of 173,000 ORCA card holders’ emails to a third-party political campaign prior to the ST3 vote in 2016. That political campaign used the information to send emails in support of ST3 to customers.

The committee was informed that some emails in Sound transit’s database are available to the public under disclosure laws. About 173,000 mails associated with Orca cards, however, are not publicly available. Yet both sets of emails were kept in the same database. When the Transportation Choices Coalition requested emails from Sound Transit via a public disclosure request, it received all of them.

Davison said that the Orca emails have since been removed from database so they “wouldn’t make this mistake again.”

Sound Transit employees answered questions put forth by the committee. Their statements added up to a situation of confusion and concern when completing the public disclosure request. But it was processed anyway with the understanding they were legally available to the public. But an investigation later determined that the set of Orca card customer mails were improperly provided.

“We learn from our mistakes … but we don’t take punitive actions every time one of our employees makes a mistake,” Davison told Sen. Steve O’Ban.

“It wasn’t so much a person who was to be reprimanded, but a process (that was at fault)…” he said.

Last week, the same committee met in Kent to discuss the law that allowed Sound Transit to go forward with the ST3 ballot measure.

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