The Public Records Officer Podcast

In this episode of The Public Records Officer Podcast, Jamie Nixon takes aim at Brandi Kruse’s September 12th show Undivided — a sanctimonious, victimhood-soaked screed that used the assassination of Charlie Kirk as political capital. Kruse demanded Democrats apologize, banned discussion of January 6th, and scolded anyone who dared call Donald Trump authoritarian — all while ignoring the receipts and the rank hypocrisy.

Through a sharp mix of humor, mockery, and fact-checks, this episode collides Kruse’s own clips with Donald Trump’s most violent rhetoric. The contrast is impossible to miss: while Kruse insists Democrats can’t say “fascist...

What happens when secrecy becomes routine in local government? From zoning boards to school districts to state agencies, closed-door decision-making shifts power away from the public — and it’s happening everywhere.

In this episode, Jamie Nixon is joined by journalist Miranda Spivack, author of Backroom Deals in Our Backyards, and reporter Shauna Sowersby of the Seattle Times. Together they unpack the tactics governments use to stall, deny, or bury records — and how everyday people can push back.

From “transitory” records excuses to the high cost of public records requests, we explore the obstruction playbook, the human toll...

What happens when governments let artificial intelligence draft their words? Who’s really behind the keyboard when AI systems churn out emails, press releases, or chatbot responses on behalf of public agencies?

In this episode, Jamie Nixon sits down with journalist Nate Sanford of Cascade PBS to talk about his reporting on how AI is creeping into government communications, and what that means for authorship, accountability, and transparency. From “transitory” excuses to the risk of bot-written bureaucracy, we dig into how AI is reshaping the fight for public records and public trust.

If you’ve...

WaTech just burned through a decade and nearly $300 million on a project that never left the planning phase. Meanwhile, Fish & Wildlife commissioners were caught telling each other to delete their texts about state business. Add in lawmakers giving themselves a 30-day auto-delete loophole, and you’ve got a masterclass in bipartisan backroom survival tactics.

In this episode, Jamie Nixon breaks down how government failure, cover-ups, and partisan blame games all add up to the same result: the public gets shut out. Along the way, he calls out hypocrisy, highlights absurdity, and—yes—finds himself in rare agreement with B...

What happens when a government designs its record-keeping system to fail the very people it’s supposed to serve? In this episode, we dig into the human cost of Washington’s auto-deletion policies and the Attorney General’s defense of destroyed evidence.

From litigants denied a fair trial because key Teams chats vanished, to families of children with disabilities fighting for services without access to past rulings, the damage is measured, not just in megabytes lost, but in due process denied.

You’ll hear from attorney Joan Mell, journalist Shauna Sowersby, and disability advocates who’ve seen fi...

The clock is running out on Governor Bob Ferguson’s six-month “pause” of Washington’s Microsoft Teams chat auto-deletion policy, and with it, the last thin excuse for secrecy. 

Will he restore transparency or quietly restart the digital shredder? 

In this episode, Jamie Nixon takes you inside the backstory Ferguson hopes you’ve forgotten: the years he spent defending this legally risky policy as Attorney General, the behind-closed-doors review with zero public input, and the ongoing culture of evasion across state agencies. 

With real public records as source material, blunt commentary, and righteous indignation...

What happens when the agency tasked with transparency goes silent? When the watchdog looks away, or worse, helps cover the tracks?

In this episode, we confront the growing crisis inside the Washington State Auditor’s Office. Top legal counsel Al Rose publicly accused WaTech of a yearlong cover-up, then quietly backed off, offering an apology letter that only deepens the mystery. Meanwhile, his own office refused to audit the agency at the center of it all, and instead sicced two Assistant Attorneys General on a citizen who simply asked for clarification. That citizen? Me.

From va...

Washington’s bureaucrats weren’t just slow-walking transparency—they were engineering its demise. In Episode 2, host Jamie Nixon exposes how state agencies, led by WaTech, quietly adopted a Microsoft Teams auto-deletion policy that wiped out 50 million public records per week. And now? They're calling critical records “transitory” just because they were sent in chat.

We dig into the cynical legal arguments used to defend mass deletion, hear from whistleblowers and internal agency voices, and debut a damning unredacted memo from the Attorney General’s Office warning that the state’s Microsoft setup wasn’t compliant with public records law. 

Governor Bob Ferguson didn’t kick off his term with a speech on education or housing. He talked about Microsoft Teams. Why?

This episode unpacks a scandal years in the making—one that saw millions of government chat messages auto-deleted under the radar. Host Jamie Nixon traces the story from a fumbled deposition to the governor’s emergency suspension of the policy, with appearances by journalist Shauna Sowersby and attorney Joan Mell. You’ll hear the documents, the audio, and the bureaucratic freakouts that followed.

It's the story of what happens when government accountability meets the dele...

Welcome to The Public Records Officer Podcast (PROP)... a show about transparency, accountability, and the absurd bureaucratic hoops government agencies jump through to avoid both.

I'm Jamie Nixon... dad, guitar player, former Washington State public information officer & communications director, and a records nerd with stories to tell.

This isn’t just a podcast. It’s a whistleblower's field guide, an exposé, and a letter of thanks to the public servants working tirelessly to get it right.

New episodes begin dropping late July.

If you care about public records, journalism, due process, or ju...