Welcome to The Public Records Officer Podcast!
The Public Records Officer Podcast

The Public Records Officer Podcast

The Public Records Officer Podcast
Fighting for the People’s Right to Know.

From public records battles to quiet cover-ups, from deleted chats to documents they hoped you’d never see... The Public Records Officer Podcast (PROP) exposes the ways power hides from the people it serves.

Hosted by open government advocate, a former elected official, state government public information officer and communications director Jamie Nixon, this show pulls back the curtain on the tactics used by public agencies to avoid transparency, and highlights the citizens, journalists, and legal warriors fighting back.

Season One investigates the ontologically shocking story of how Washington State agencies used Microsoft Teams to automatically delete public records after just seven days, raising questions of legality, accountability, and who gets to decide what the public has a right to see.

Each episode blends documents, depositions, interviews, and digital trails with sharp commentary and a sense of civic urgency. Whether it’s a modified invoice, redacted emails, or a policy crafted to vanish before a subpoena hits... The PROP is here to shine a light where the law demands it.

Featuring interviews with journalists, attorneys, and the officials who tried to sound the alarm before it was too late.

The truth doesn’t expire in seven days.

Recent Episodes

Sept. 6, 2025

Ep. 7 Who Wrote That

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 episod...
Aug. 29, 2025

Ep. 6 Transparency Isn't a Team Sport

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. ...
Aug. 25, 2025

Ep. 5 The Cost of Erasure

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 de...
Aug. 12, 2025

Ep. 4 Ferguson's Folly

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 t...
Aug. 5, 2025

Ep. 3 The Watchdog's Blind Eye

Correction (added August 2025): In this episode I incorrectly said the State Auditor’s Office was not a party to my lawsuit. The SAO was added in an amended complaint, but only for purposes of being bound by a potential injun...
July 31, 2025

Ep. 2 The Obstruction Playbook

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 polic...