State Attorney General visits the Valley
April 29, 2009
By Michael Rowe
State Attorney General Rob McKenna addressed the Snoqualmie Valley Rotary Club on April 23 at Snoqualmie Ridge Golf Club.
McKenna’s talk focused on his involvement in the 2008 legislative session and his initiatives as attorney general. He highlighted three areas that his office is particularly concerned about: consumer protection, public safety and government accountability.
On consumer protection, McKenna said that, as the economy went into the downturn, his office began to receive more complaints about mortgage rescue scams. Typically, these are unfavorable business dealings where a person deeds their home to a mortgage “rescuer,” who claims that they will buy their loan and lease back the house to the original homeowners. Some people find that their lease payments are more than their mortgage payments, and if they are unable to make those payments they can still loose their homes. In other instances, the mortgage rescue fails to meet property tax obligations and pockets any equity in the property after it is auctioned to pay taxes.
Attorney General Rob McKenna speaks to the Snoqualmie Valley Rotary Club April 23.
McKenna said that his office supported new legislation to provide for a cooling off period before consumers deed over their properties to give them enough time to decide if they are making a prudent financial choice. The new laws also guarantee that homeowners will receive 82 percent of their equity if they lose their home due to a mortgage rescue scam.
A piece of consumer protection supported by the attorney general’s office was a bill requiring training of bank tellers and other bank workers to spot financial abuse of elderly or impaired individuals by caregivers. It also protects the bank workers from liability for privacy violations when reporting suspected abuse. He cited the example of an elderly Issaquah man, who last year was tricked into marrying a caregiver that tried to steal money from his bank accounts. A bank teller unraveled the scheme by reporting suspicious activity to police.
A related piece of legislation that was passed in an omnibus bill would create a public database for complaints against care-workers. McKenna said that some lawmakers questioned whether the bill would unfairly target caregivers.
“I can find out more about a plumber or a car mechanic than I can about a caregiver,” said McKenna, summarizing his argument for the database.
Several new public safety laws were also supported by the attorney general’s office. McKenna said that he was concerned about sexual predators online, and proposed creating a new felony for people caught viewing child pornography. Currently only downloading child pornography can be punished. The proposed law was not voted on over civil rights concerns, but McKenna expects it to be brought back in the next legislative session.
Another piece of public safety legislation that the attorney general’s office was involved with was a bill to study and plan for the creation of a digital forensic lab to aid police with collecting evidence from computers, cell phones and other digital devices. The bill was signed into law April 8.
McKenna noted that he also negotiated with social networking sites, such as Facebook and Myspace, to make it more difficult for predators to contact children through the popular Web sites.
On the issue of government accountability, McKenna said he worked with the Legislature to fix a flaw in the public records disclosure laws that was being abused by felons. According to the attorney general, a small group of incarcerated felons are sending multiple public records requests to harass corrections officers and others. The records requests cost the responding agencies and local governments hundreds of thousands of dollars, McKenna said. He said that the new law would prevent bad faith public records requests by inmates, while still allowing for legitimate use of the open records laws.
Snoqualmie Mayor Matt Larson asked if McKenna had considered changes to public records request laws that would prevent harassing and bad faith requests by members of the public who are opposed to city actions. McKenna said that his office was considering changes that would create an administrative system for cities to resolve disputes over records requests. Currently, cities and citizens are forced to bring disputes over record requests to court. McKenna said that this was expensive for all involved, and was probably not a good use of the court’s time.
At the end of McKenna’s speech, Duncan Wilson, city administrator for North Bend, also thanked the attorney general for helping the city end its water moratorium.
Reach reporter Michael Bayless Rowe at mrowe@snovalleystar.com or 392-6434, ext. 248.
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