At a Clark County Community Development Learning Lab, staff explained how residents should submit public records requests and what to expect from the county's processing steps.

Desiree Desmonnier described the public records portal workflow, saying requesters should create an account or log in, select Community Development as the department, choose a record type and provide a clear, specific description of records sought. "If you're vague, then we'll have to reach out to you for a clarification and that just adds time to us processing your records request," she said.

Desmonnier said the county sends a confirmation and that, under the Washington State Public Records Act (RCW 42.56), the county generally has five business days to produce the records, provide a link, offer a completion estimate or deny the request. She explained the county uses govQA to track requests and assigns them to a staff member for preliminary research; typical processing often takes two to three weeks because records staff balance requests with other duties.

She listed common exemptions that may require redaction, including personal information (driver's-license numbers, bank-account information), sensitive archaeological-site details and attorney-client privileged communications. When redactions occur, the county supplies a redaction log explaining what was redacted and why; users receive a closure email listing the number of pages produced and the search criteria used.

Desmonnier also noted retention and availability limits: per Washington State Archives retention guidance, residential building plans are normally retained for 90 days after a certificate of occupancy, so older plans are often unavailable; she recommended requesting plans from the builder if the house is recently built.

The presenter gave operational metrics: the office typically has about 25 requests in its queue (it has been as high as 70), and staff have handled 715 requests so far this year (727 in 2023; 696 in 2022). She told the audience that while the county prefers portal submissions for tracking and metrics, requests submitted by phone, email or in person will still be entered into the portal and processed.