That raises an interesting question. Has the contract for this audit been accepted as complete and the bill paid?

I can find no record in any of the county meeting minutes (here: http://www.co.grays-harbor.wa.us/gh_minutes/index.asp ) that the county ever "formally accepted" the report in any way or form. My records request shows it appeared via e-mail to the commissioners with only one county employee e-mailing back and asking for more time to offer up comments on the report.

I wrote an article on Jan. 4 here talking about the money the county did pay on the report: (http://www.thedailyworld.com/articles/2010/01/04/local_news/doc4b40476f9e731981656977.txt):

In August, the commissioners authorized spending up to $20,000 for a third-party to conduct the review. In October, the commissioners signed a contract with the code council. The county and most government entities uses the building code written by the code council for its building permits.

Then-County Commissioner Bob Beerbower voted against the audit, calling it a waste of money. He also expressed displeasure that a third-party review would be done by folks that the Planning & Building Department work with all the time.

By January, two specialists with the code council hosted a “kick off” meeting with the commissioners. But they did not return to actually do the review until the spring. In the interim, the commissioners authorized spending an additional $2,000 on the review. They also terminated the employment of Paul Easter, citing budget reasons.

The report was due in June.

“It’s amazing,” Wilson said. “I was running for office and it was an issue and we thought we might have been able to even get something before the election was over, and, well that didn’t work, obviously. … What I think happened is time went on and we’d have a little bit of back and forth with them but very little. It really wasn’t very much.”

Budget Director Rose Elway said Monday that despite the funding authorizations for the extra $2,000, the county has only paid $4,500 to the code council so far.

To slightly clarify. The International Codes have been adopted by the WA state legislature and every city and county is required to enforce the state adopted codes within their jurisdictions.

During the 1990s, as my memory serves (always a dubious prospect), the three major "model code" groups in the USA unified their codes into the International group of codes.

If it hasn't yet been paid for, doesn't that kind of support the argument that it's a draft? i.e. a work in progress?

In the public sector (not within the government) I've been the recipient of numerous audits and have performed a few audits. The procedure for doing this is quite straight forward. The audit team comes in, checks files, interviews those deemed necessary to the audit (both within and outside the entity being audited), and then the information is reviewed and formulated by the audit members into a report format. The report is then completed in full in a findings format and forwarded for action to the entity being audited.

Once the audit report is received, the findings are reviewed for necessary corrective action. If there are any questions or disagreements with the audit findings, those are brought to the attention of the audit members for any clarification. Any changes made resulting from such questions/clarification are then made as an addendum to the original report.

Payment always occurred upon initial receipt of the audit report. It is possible that government procedures differ from this, but it is not at all clear as to why that would be the case.

You are correct. Counties and cities have no discretion. They were required to adopt the International Building Codes once they were adopted by the State.

Without reading the report, I can't say whether the portions which were redacted are exempt from disclosure or not. However, after reading the article today, it appears that Stew Menefee, the County Prosecutor, is justifying the redactions on the basis of this statute:

"RCW 42.56.280
Preliminary drafts, notes, recommendations, intra-agency memorandums.

"Preliminary drafts, notes, recommendations, and intra-agency memorandums in which opinions are expressed or policies formulated or recommended are exempt under this chapter, except that a specific record is not exempt when publicly cited by an agency in connection with any agency action."

If that is so, it may have been better to simply not release any of the draft, and to wait until the final draft was ready.

You can't just rely on the RCW. If you did, then it would appear that a wide swath of items would qualify to follow under this exemption. And that's just not so. It is a very narrowly defined exemption, thanks to a number of court rulings. The Attorney General's Office has all of the information up on their Web site on the open public records act and the open public meetings act to help the regular person make sense of the law.
http://www.atg.wa.gov/OpenGovernment/InternetManual/Chapter2.aspx

2 Specific Exemptions from Disclosure

Deliberative Process (Preliminary Drafts, Notes, Recommendations, Intra-Agency Memoranda)

Statutory Provision: Preliminary drafts, notes, recommendations, and intra-agency memorandums in which opinions are expressed or policies formulated or recommended [are exempt from disclosure] except that a specific record shall not be exempt when publicly cited by an agency in connection with any agency action. RCW 42.56.280.

See generally Section 7.3(4), Public Records Act Deskbook: Washington’s Public Disclosure and Open Public Meetings Laws (Greg Overstreet, ed.) (Wash. State Bar Assoc. 2006) (available for purchase); WAC 44-14-06002(4).

Preliminary drafts or recommendations may be withheld by an agency but only if they pertain to the agency's deliberative process and show the exchange of opinions within an agency before it reaches a decision or takes an action. The purpose of this exemption severely limits its scope. Progressive Animal Welfare Soc'y v. University of Wash., 125 Wn.2d 243, 256, 884 P.2d 592 (1994); Hearst Corp. v. Hoppe, 90 Wn.2d 123, 580 P.2d 246 (1978). Its purpose is to "protect the give and take of deliberations necessary to formulation of agency policy." Hearst Corp. v. Hoppe, at 123; Progressive Animal Welfare Soc'y v. University of Wash., at 256.

The test to determine whether a record is covered by this exemption has been summarized by the Supreme Court as follows:

In order to rely on this exemption, an agency must show that the records contain predecisional opinions or recommendations of subordinates expressed as part of a deliberative process; that disclosure would be injurious to the deliberative or consultative function of the process; that disclosure would inhibit the flow of recommendations, observations, and opinions; and finally, that the materials covered by the exemption reflect policy recommendations and opinions and not raw factual data on which a decision is based. Progressive Animal Welfare Soc'y v. University of Wash., 125 Wn.2d at 256. It is not, however, required that documents be prepared by subordinates to be exempt. ACLU v. City of Seattle, 121 Wn. App. 544, 552, 89 P.3d 295 (2004).

The exemption applies only to documents that are part of the deliberative or policy-making process; records about implementing policy are not covered. Cowles Publishing v. City of Spokane, 69 Wn. App. 678, 849 P.2d 1271 (1993), review denied, 122 Wn.2d 1013 (1993). For this reason, inter-agency (as opposed to intra-agency) discussions probably are not covered by this exemption. Columbian Publishing Co. v. City of Vancouver, 36 Wash. App. 25, 671 P.2d 280 (1983).

Matters that are factual, or that are assumed to be factual for discussion purposes, must be disclosed. Brouillet v. Cowles Publishing Co., 114 Wn.2d 788, 791 P.2d 526 (1990); Hearst Corp. v. Hoppe, 90 Wn.2d 123, 580 P.2d 246 (1978) (description of a taxpayer's home by a field assessor treated as fact by agency appraisers). Thus, unless disclosure would reveal or expose the deliberative process, as distinct from the facts used to make a decision, the exemption does not apply. Hearst Corp. v. Hoppe, at 133. Moreover, once the policies or recommendations are implemented, those recommendations, drafts and opinions cease to be protected under this exemption. Progressive Animal Welfare Soc'y v. University of Wash., 125 Wn.2d 243, 257, 884 P.2d 592 (1994). An evaluation of a real property site requested by a city attorney was exempt from disclosure under the deliberative process exemption where it was cited as the basis for a final action. Overlake Fund v. City of Bellevue, 60 Wn. App. 787, 810 P.2d 507 (1991), appeal after remand, 70 Wn. App. 789, 855 P.2d 706, review denied, 123 Wn.2d 1009 (1994) (study ultimately withheld on other grounds). Subjective evaluations are not exempt under this exemption if they are treated as raw factual data and not subject to further deliberation and consideration. Progressive Animal Welfare Soc'y v. University of Wash., 125 Wn.2d at 256-57; Hearst Corp. v. Hoppe, 90 Wn.2d at 134.

Case example: A public agency conducts an internal review of a specific problem. A report is prepared consisting of an overview of the problem, information collected or reviewed, and recommendations for policy changes.

Resolution: The recommendations for policy changes are the only parts of the report likely to be exempt, unless the agency can show that the remainder of the report contains information that is inextricably intertwined with the recommendation. The agency must show that release of the factual or discussion portions would be the same as releasing the recommendations. This situation seldom exists and, for that reason, an agency must usually disclose parts of predecisional memos before it makes a final decision.

There's your nub, right there. As I understand the situation this is the exact exemption involved.

Steven,

I agree that the burden would be on the County to show that the exemption applies here. It seems like a stretch to me, that all of the redactions have to do with recommendations, but without knowing what was redacted, I won't comment.