Last month, I wrote a story about the number of hours that were used by Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes's office to look into whether deep-bore tunnel legislation could be put up for public vote. I also asked for the number of hours worked on subsequent lawsuits filed by Holmes's office to keep tunnel legislation off the ballot. (The city council wants the city attorney to keep the issue off the ballot because they're nervous the public will vote against the tunnel.)

The story was based on time sheets provided by Holmes's office (in response to a records request), which show 1,445 hours total hours. PubliCola calls into question whether that figure is correct. I want to explain how the information was organized, why it's still murky how many hours the city attorney's office put into their efforts vis-a-vis the tunnel going on the ballot, and make a correction.

On records that account for attorney time, some of the hours were placed under categories that seemed so broad you couldn't tell whether they had to do with whether tunnel legislation could be referred to voters, e.g., "Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Project," "Viaduct tunnel," "coordination," and "environmental issues." "Environmental issues" might not seem relevant, but within that section are hours labeled "meeting on referendum issues," "revisions to referendum memo," "review election issues," and "review complaint related to referendum." Likewise, in the section for "coordination," some hours are labeled for "review initiative cases," "research initiative and referendum law," and "memo re referendum." While some hours seemed unrelated to the request, many other hours are categorized in unspecific terms like "internal meeting" or with no description at all.

You get the picture: Scores of hours placed in other work categories were, in fact, about the referendum and initiative. How many is unclear. That's why I called Naomi Hillyard, the public records officer in the city attorney's office, for clarity. Hillyard made clear that the information she sent were the hours "as best as I could narrow it." Again, she said that this was not just a collection of tunnel-related work, but was overwhelmingly specific to the question of whether the tunnel legislation could be referred to voters. When asked specifically about the office's environmental-impact work, Hillyard said that "the environmental issues were not included."

I took Hillyard's word in that conversation that those categories ("Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Project," "Viaduct tunnel," "coordination," "environmental issues," etc.) pertained to my request and I wrote that in my original post.

But I inadvertently left out something of my original post. Holmes's office had sent a letter along with the first installment of records that said the time sheets contained records "including, but not limited to, the referability issue and the lawsuits. These are being provided to you, even though they are not project numbers specific to the subject of your request, in the interest of being over inclusive."

The article in May failed to refer back to this original letter sent in April because I'd forgotten about it and because it looked like the boilerplate that typically comes with public records. But I should have gone back and quoted this letter: This would make clear that there are ambiguity in the numbers. I should have written something along the lines of this:

In a letter sent with the first installment of records, Holmes's office said that certain records included, but were "not limited to," the "project numbers specific to the subject of your request." That is to say, some of the hours may not have been about the tunnel's referability. However, Holmes's office included all of them because some of those categories did include hours used for tunnel referability. That said, Hillyard has assured me that these were included because those categories mostly pertain to the tunnel referability.

Not including that was a mistake. We regret the error and have updated the original article.

That said, I do not know why Hillyard was so unequivocal that the these hours pertained to the refer-ability of the tunnel as best she could narrow it. I also do not know why, after the article was written, Holmes's office did not respond to four follow-up requests to respond the original article. If Hillyard or anyone else in the office was concerned that it was wrong, they should have replied to all those attempts to contact them. To date, Holmes's office has not claimed that these other categories of hours were not used to refer-ability of the tunnel

I've also corrected the headline of the article. While it originally said, "City Attorney's Office Has Spent Nearly $80,000 to Keep Tunnel Off Ballot," it now makes clear that the figure applies to the referability question and not just the lawsuits. While I explained myself in the post—that the records request pertained to the referability of tunnel legislation and the litigation—I've changed the headline to make clear that it's a more broad issue. In seeking brevity, the headline became misleading. We regret the error.