Wednesday evening Mark Griswold of the Sound Politics blog reported that he, along with Keith Ervin of the Seattle Times, received a tip that current candidate for King County executive Dow Constantine may have be involved in an incident of inappropriate behavior with a female county employee. On October 23, Ervin performed his journalistic duties with textbook precision, submitting a public records request for documents relating to any such incident. Sailing into the storm of a potentially important story concerning a candidate for higher office’s conduct, why then have Ervin and the Times taken down their sails as soon as a restraining order was filed October 27 to keep all public records secret until just after the election?

The reluctance of the Times to pursue legal options to obtain these documents is particularly curious in light of their herculean effort to pry open the private docket of Hutchison’s civil settlement with former employer KIRO, filed that had been sealed by mutual consent of all parties and contained no items of public importance.

The value of providing to voters all public records pertaining to inappropriate conduct by a County councilman is incalculable, and the Times should take seriously its responsibility as the city’s sole representative of the Fourth Estate.

Investigation is continuing on this story and updates will follow as they become available.

[Disclosure: The original headline of this article was changed after consideration that it might improperly characterize the "Jane Doe" for whom the restraining order was filed.]