WhatFinger

City of Seattle’s refusal to disclose “gun violence tax” revenues

JUDGE FINDS AGAINST SEATTLE IN PRA CASE FILED BY SAF, MAGAZINE EDITOR

By —— Bio and Archives--July 28, 2017

Guns-Crime-Terror-Security | Comments | Print Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us

BELLEVUE, WA – A King County Superior Court judge has ruled in favor of a firearms magazine editor and the Second Amendment Foundation in a case challenging the City of Seattle’s refusal to disclose “gun violence tax” revenues under the Public Records Act (PRA).

SAF filed the lawsuit in September with Dave Workman, senior editor of TheGunMag.com. SAF owns the publication. At issue was the city’s refusal to comply with Workman’s PRA request for revenue collected by the city under its “gun violence tax,” passed by the city council in the summer of 2015.

“We are delighted with the outcome of this case,” said SAF Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, who is also publisher of TheGunMag.com. “It was silly for Seattle to withhold this information, but we’re pretty certain why the city did it. The council was told that this tax could generate between $300,000 and a half-million dollars, but now it appears the city has collected just over $100,000, which is an embarrassing shortfall.

“As a result,” he added, “the city has essentially lost money on this scheme because now they have to pay our attorney fees, plus a small penalty. On top of that, the city has lost tax revenue because one major gun dealer has moved out of the city and another has reported considerable sales losses. That is tax money the city will never realize.”

Workman said he is both personally and professionally pleased with the outcome.

“For me, this was always a First Amendment issue,” he said. “The city adopted a controversial tax for questionable reasons, and the public has a right to know how much the city collected.”

In her bench ruling, King County Superior Court Judge Lori K. Smith ruled that the city had not acted out of bad faith, so she awarded plaintiffs a nominal penalty of $377, amounting to one dollar a day since the lawsuit was filed last year.

SAF was represented by attorneys Steven Fogg and David Edwards with Corr Cronin Michelson Baumgardner Fogg & Moore LLP of Seatt

CFPSubcribe

Only YOU can save CFP from Social Media Suppression. Tweet, Post, Forward, Subscribe or Bookmark us

Second Amendment Foundation -- Bio and Archives | Comments

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) is dedicated to promoting a better understanding about our Constitutional heritage to privately own and possess firearms.

To that end, we carry on many educational and legal action programs designed to better inform the public about the gun control debate.

 

Commenting Policy

Please adhere to our commenting policy to avoid being banned. As a privately owned website, we reserve the right to remove any comment and ban any user at any time.

Comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence and death, racism, anti-Semitism, or personal or abusive attacks on other users may be removed and result in a ban.
-- Follow these instructions on registering:

If the Comments do not load:

  1. Reload page
  2. You might be running ad blockers (Spot gets stopped by ad blockers)
  3. Your Flash is out of date