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Cowlitz County approves Granicus public‑records licensing, secures data export rights
Summary
The Cowlitz County Board of Commissioners approved a new end‑user license agreement with Granicus for public‑records intake and additional redaction licenses; the contract includes a paid data‑export provision the county says will allow it to retrieve hosted records.
The Cowlitz County Board of Commissioners on March 4 approved an end‑user license agreement with Granicus, the county’s cloud vendor for public‑records intake and redaction, and authorized related annual licensing fees.
The move gives the county a formal contract with Granicus after operating without one for months and includes a provision to extract the county’s records from Granicus on request, IT Director Travis Foschini said. “We’re contractually obligated to retain a copy of the data, and Granicus is a SaaS service, so it’s basically hosted in the cloud,” Foschini said. “In this new contract, we’ve reached terms that they will provide us that data on request for a fixed amount.”
Why it matters: the export clause lets the county obtain an offline copy of records currently stored with Granicus and could enable a future vendor change without losing historical data. Foschini said the county intends to use the export option this year to evaluate moving data to another provider if desired.
Details: the contract covers the county’s public‑records intake system and additional redaction licenses to support processing of larger volumes of requests and video evidence such as body‑worn camera footage. Foschini said memory of the agreed‑upon extraction fee was $1,500; at a later point in the discussion a figure of $1,700 was mentioned. The transcript does not provide a single definitive, written figure; the county’s IT office will need to confirm the final invoice amount.
Board action: a commissioner moved to approve “the Granicus end user license agreement for public records intake as presented by the IT director.” The board voted in favor; two commissioners recorded “aye” during the roll call and one commissioner was not present for the meeting.
What was not decided: the county did not complete a full export during the meeting. Foschini said the county has not yet executed a bulk data extraction but plans to start the work during the contract year.
Context: Commissioners said public‑records requests have grown in size and scope and that more redaction capacity was likely needed. A commissioner asked whether the Granicus export will include all county departments; Foschini said it would affect “all public records request of the county or departments of the county.”
Next steps: staff will follow up on the mechanics and cost of the data extraction and implement the licensed redaction seats as needed.
