Want Local Government Transparency? That’ll be $150 Payable to Washington County

For 18 months, local resident Tom Thorsen has been trying to get an answer to a simple question – why can’t he access the Washington County Government website? And despite four different emails over this time period, Mr. Thorsen was unable to get an answer from Washington County Government, until the County was contacted by local news media and a local attorney.

When Mr. Thorsen initially reached out to us regarding the difficulties accessing the county website, specifically while overseas, we worked to help him in any way we can, from providing the meeting agendas to any other information from the county website. We also provided a hypothesis to him that the access was being blocked while overseas as an added security measure after the 2022 ransomware incident. However, what we were unaware of at the time is just how long Mr. Thorsen had been trying to get answers to this simple question.

After learning of how long Mr. Thorsen had been trying to get assistance, we tried to get our own answers, not only to why his access was blocked, but more importantly why Washington County never provided him a clear answer. And after our media inquiries as well as public information act request, we were able to confirm the reasons for his access denial was indeed an added security measure, but not the reasons he never received a response.

And while it’s concerning that it took local news media and an attorney inquiries regarding the matter to get the County to respond, possibly even more concerning is that we still have no idea why the County simply didn’t respond in the first place. Why have we not received details on why Mr. Thorsen never received a response? Because Washington County Government wants us to pay $150 to get those answers, in part, because no official policy exists justifying the county’s blocking of foreign IP addresses. Yes you read that correctly, the county wants us to pay $150 to understand their processes, because there’s no official policy.

“I would like to have an existing county employee be assigned as an ombudsman between the county and the public,” said Thorsen in a statement to Radio Free Hub City. “Then post weekly metrics reports tracking questions that the county received and tracking progress on resolution.”​​​​

Why does Washington County want to charge us $150? Because, according to the county, there are 274 emails related to Mr. Thorsen’s emails – even though the county never responded directly with an answer to his request. And apparently, just as Washington County did not have a policy prohibiting the usage of personal email for official business, according to County Attorney Zach Kieffer, the County also lacks an official policy allowing the County IT staff to block connections from outside the United States. It was noted that 274 emails seems like a lot of emails for such a request, and the county did not disagree.

Additionally, the County claims no ability to remove duplicate emails from their search results, as outlined in their response to our request, which results in additional work required to review duplicate emails.

EDITOR’S NOTE: It is our belief that the tool used by the County likely has the ability to remove duplicate emails, but the County has not been properly instructed on how to utilize this feature by the software vendor.

Because the County once again has no official policy regarding yet another IT department matter, and does not have the technical capability to remove duplicate emails from its own search results, it will cost $150 to gain better insight into their discussions on this matter, how this inquiry was handled, and more importantly, why the county felt Mr. Thorsen’s multiple emails did not warrant a response until the County was also contacted by local attorney Adam Greivell and this news media outlet. And while it is important to note that Mr. Greivell did not reach out the County representing Mr. Thorsen, but instead reached out as a concerned citizen, and despite the fact that we here at Radio Free Hub City have raised multiple concerns that this is very much in the public interest to disclose why the county did not respond, the County has chosen to deny our fee waiver as they do not feel it is in the public interest to disclose this information, due to the limited scope and number of individuals it affects, even though they have now received multiple requests for the same information by unaffiliated parties.

Why does this matter so much? Because our reviews of other local government emails have provided significant insight into the working and dysfunction of local governments, such as when the Town of Keedysville wanted to arrest people for playing basketball in the park during COVID, email discussions which ultimately led to an Open Meetings Act violation. The fact that Washington County has 274 emails discussing an issue for which there is apparently no policy is concerning, and taxpayers have a right to know why the County is functioning the way it is and how they’re spending our tax dollars. And maybe the emails are benign and show serious attempts to resolve his problems but simply forgot to follow-up with a response. Or, maybe the emails show serious disregard for the concerns of a resident who is only trying to view what’s coming up on future meeting agendas or pay their property tax bills. We have no way of knowing unless Washington County releases the emails, which they won’t do unless we pay.

Where can we go from here? Well, we could contact the PIA Ombudsman and request mediation. However, it’s unlikely that mediation would go very far, and would take quite some time. Additionally, we would be unable to proceed to the PIA Compliance Board because the fee does not exceed $350, which is the threshold required for PIA Compliance Board review. So that only leaves us with trying to get the information elsewhere, or paying the fee. And while we absolutely disagree with the county’s position that this request is not in the public interest, we understand that the county has recently spent significant amounts of time and effort on PIA requests, and are currently working on a separate article about the overwhelming number of requests they have received, and acknowledge that the county did offer to narrow the search to reduce the number of records. However, without more detailed knowledge of the County’s IT processes and procedures, it’s difficult to narrow such a search, and likely getting an incomplete view of the emails would not do this issue justice. And we feel that the county taxpayers deserve to know why resident requests are going unanswered by the County.

This is not the first time a local government has negatively impacted our search for the truth in a Public Information Act request. Previously we have found workarounds to obtain information in response to denials or fee waiver denials in other requests, such as requesting the same information from other government agencies. However, this strategy only gets us so far, and at certain points it becomes necessary to simply pay the fee to obtain records as quickly as possible. However, at the same time, we’re literally operating on a shoestring budget and can’t really afford to pay for these requests out of our revenue, especially if we end up doing multiple requests in a single year. Therefore, in response to this continued difficulty and the potential impact on our operating budget, we’re now launching our Public Transparency Fund. This fund will be used to help shed light on government when it isn’t feasible to wait for months for the appeal process, or other similar difficulties. And best of all, it’s structured so that local residents can fund the requests that matter the most to them. It’s unfortunate that local government is not always committed to readily providing transparency, but we will adapt and overcome this obstacle, just like we always do.

If you’d like to help us in our mission for increased transparency in local government, or to fund the request associated with this story, please visit the fund page, and contribute if you can. We’ve already applied a previous contribution from Mr. Thorsen to the fund for this specific issue.

It’s unfortunate that it’s come to this, but we won’t let this stop us from continuing to help residents better understand their local government.

This article was updated 9/22/2025 to include a quote from Tom Thorsen.

Associated documents for this story are available in our Public Information Archive.

Story by Ken Buckler

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