'Free' Printing, $176 Later: Seattle's County Contract Scandal of 1877
The Dispatch accuses the Intelligencer of taking public money after bidding to do the county's printing for nothing—and demands the next contract be opened to honest bids.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The time approaches when the printing contract gratuitously granted to the Intelligencer will expire; and we suppose that the farce of putting in sealed proposals will be re-enacted. It may not be generally known, but the advertising business in Seattle is probably done at lower prices than in any other city of its size and importance in America. There is not a business house in this town which advertises in all three papers but would have to pay as much to either the Alta, Call or Bulletin as it pays to all three here, for the same space occupied.
Now, if men are to do business for the public, let them proceed by some method recognized as legitimate in business circles. If the county is entitled to have its work done at any less cost than a private individual, we fail to see it. Nor do we know of any man whose patriotism permits him to charge cash figures for his work when he knows that his compensation is to be in scrip that has fluctuating value.
It is a matter of public record that while the Intelligencer claims to do the work for nothing, it not only received $176 for printing the report of Burke and Rowland, as experts, but also wanted additional compensation for circulating 700 copies as supplements to its weekly edition. The Court allowed the bill, which was just about $100 in excess of what either of the other papers would gladly have done it for, though not perhaps in a single issue. The whole matter was wrong from top to bottom. There was no law to warrant the letting of a contract gratuitously, for the law expects every man to be paid for his labor; there was no law to warrant the appointment of Rowland and Burke as experts, for the examination of the books of public officers is the proper work of the Grand Jury; and when it comes to printing the report, there was no law to allow a man compensation at one figure for what he had bid to do at another.
We don't believe we shall put in any bid for printing 'by the lump' at the commencement of the new term. No proposals made that way are fair or equitable. The specifications should state what advertising is needed and what blanks are required for the use of the county officers. Then there may be something legitimate in the transactions of the county with the printers.
“There was no law to warrant the letting of a contract gratuitously, for the law expects every man to be paid for his labor.”
The fight over who gets the public's printing money is an early Seattle version of a civic argument that never goes away: no-bid contracts, insider deals, and work promised 'for free' that somehow still bills the taxpayer. A century and a half later, Seattle is still debating how transparent its procurement and public contracts should be.
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