How the registry guards against being wrong.

Every case in the registry is a structured summary of a public document, a court filing, an audit finding, an ethics opinion, or named-byline reporting that has already entered the public record. The registry does not generate accusations, does not investigate independently, and does not publish material that has not first been put on the record by a government body or an established news outlet. This posture is the foundation of every editorial standard on this page.

The registry relies, where applicable, on the Washington common-law and statutory fair-report privilege for accurate summaries of official proceedings and public records (see, e.g., RCW 4.24.510 regarding communications to government and to the public on matters of public concern, and on the neutral-reportage doctrine as discussed in Washington appellate cases addressing fair and accurate summary of public proceedings). These doctrines do not protect inaccurate or unfair summaries. They protect accurate ones. The registry's standards are written to keep summaries accurate and fair.

Every case file contains three kinds of content, held to three different standards:

• Factual claims about conduct. What a named actor allegedly did or did not do, what a court or oversight body found, what a settlement says. These claims are anchored to a specific cited source for every assertion. The word “alleged” precedes any claim that has not been the subject of a finding by a court or oversight body.
• Structural characterization. The severity-type label (criminal fraud, conflict of interest, structural failure, rule gaming, special privileges, misuse of public resources, civil-rights harm, statutory non-compliance, aggregate-liability pattern) is the registry's classification of the category of conduct at issue. It is a structural label, not a finding of guilt. The labels are defined on the Methodology page.
• Reform argument. The reform_argument section in each case explains why the registry treats the matter as illustrative of a specific structural reform need. This section is analytical commentary, not factual assertion. Where the reform argument advances an interpretation beyond what the source documents state on their face, the interpretation is identified as such.

Readers and any subject of a case are entitled to challenge any of the three. The corrections process treats factual disputes, characterization disputes, and reform-argument disputes as distinct categories.

The registry does not contact named subjects in advance of publication. Cases are summaries of material already in the public record from a government body, court, oversight entity, or established news outlet, and the underlying source itself has typically already been the subject of public notice through that original publication. The registry's view is that adding a second pre-publication notice cycle for what is already a derivative compilation would slow the work without materially adding to the protections already provided by the original source's own editorial process.

In place of pre-publication notice, the registry offers two post-publication mechanisms with explicit service-level commitments:

• Right of response. Any individual named in a case may submit a response through the corrections intake form. Responses are read within five business days. Substantive on-the-record responses are attached to the case at the subject's option.
• Correction request. Any reader, including a named subject, may submit a correction request through the same form. Corrections supported by documentary evidence are applied within five business days and logged on the Corrections page with the date and the prompting source.

This is a deliberate policy choice. Readers who believe pre-publication notice is the better practice are welcome to weigh that against the registry's actual correction record, which is published in full.

Source documents (audits, court filings, settlement agreements, ethics opinions, agency reports) are linked directly to the publisher's hosted copy or, where the publisher's copy has been removed or is unstable, to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine capture taken at the time of case intake. The registry does not rehost or mirror copyrighted material on its own infrastructure. Excerpts and quotes cited in case bodies are limited in length and used in service of identification, analysis, and commentary, consistent with fair-use principles.

If you believe material on the registry infringes a copyright you control, send a notice with the specific URL, the work claimed, your contact information, and a good-faith statement to the corrections intake address. Notices are read within five business days. Material reasonably claimed to infringe is taken down pending review, and the takedown is logged on the Corrections page.

The registry is maintained by an independent Washington researcher. The editor's biographical detail is deliberately not published. Anonymity here is the same kind of editorial choice many investigative blogs and policy compilations make, taken for safety and to keep the focus on the documents rather than the compiler. Anonymity does not change the registry's evidentiary standards or its accountability mechanisms, both of which are public on this page and on the Methodology page.

The editor disclosure stack:

• Political affiliation. The editor is a politically centrist Washington resident with prior work history on both Democratic and Republican campaigns and in legislative and county-government staff roles in Washington. The registry's editorial criterion is the source record, not the party label. No case is included or excluded to engineer the appearance of partisan balance.
• Funding. The registry takes no funding from political parties, candidates, advocacy organizations, public-relations firms, or any party named in a case. It does not solicit donations and has no commercial advertising.
• Conflicts. Where the editor has a prior professional relationship with a named actor in a case, the conflict is disclosed in the case body. Cases in which the editor has a current professional or financial relationship with a named actor are not published.
• Contributors. The contributor field in each case identifies the person who drafted the record. Where contributors other than the editor are involved in the future, their disclosures will be added here.

Because the registry compiles already-public records and named-byline reporting, it does not solicit, cultivate, or rely on confidential sources. There is no tip line. There is no anonymous-submission pathway. If you have information you believe should be in the registry, the appropriate channel is to route it first to the relevant government oversight body, audit office, ethics board, inspector general, or established news outlet. Once that body has acted on the record, the registry can summarize what they put on the record.

This is a deliberate design choice. Confidential-source journalism is essential, but it is a different discipline than what the registry does. Conflating the two would dilute both.

Every substantive change to a published case is logged on the Corrections page, with the date, the case slug, the field changed, and the source that prompted the change. The corrections log is not summarized or selectively pruned. Earlier corrections remain on the page in chronological order.

The registry's standard for what counts as a substantive change: any edit that changes a factual claim, a dollar figure, a date, a named actor, a legal-status field, an evidentiary-status field, or a classification label. Stylistic edits, typo fixes, link reformatting, and metadata-only updates are not logged.

Effective May 24, 2026. Material changes to this page will be logged on the Corrections page alongside changes to published cases.