Contested divorce file to be made public

Most of a contentious divorce file of lobbyist Ron Dotzauer will be made public soon under orders signed Tuesday by a Snohomish County Superior Court judge.

Reporters sought to make the file public under recent state Supreme Court rules restricting what information could remain sealed in public files.

Dotzauer, friend and adviser of U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, opposed unsealing the file, but Judge Thomas Wynne made it clear for weeks that most of it would be opened for public inspection.

Wynne signed three orders removing a variety of financial, personal and medical information from the 3,572-page file of Dotzauer and his ex-wife, Angela Douglas. Reporters asked for the file to be opened to see if it would shed light on a loan Cantwell made in 1999 to Dotzauer.

The information was sought while Cantwell was in a successful re-election campaign against Mike McGavick. She easily beat McGavick in the Nov. 7 general election.

Since 2000, Cantwell has disclosed the loan of between $15,000 and $50,000 as an asset on federal financial disclosure forms. Neither she nor Dotzauer would discuss the loan.

Under court rules that went into effect in the summer, local courts can’t seal a public file, or portions of it, without finding specific reasons for doing so.

Wynne has labored over the 14 volumes of the Dotzauer file, looking for information that should be removed.

Financial information, Social Security and account numbers, and medical reports were examples of information that will remain sealed.

Mark Allen, who manages cases in the Snohomish County Clerk’s office, said it would probably take his staff until at least Dec. 1 to go through the file and make sure the material included in the court orders has been removed from public view.

The Dotzauer file is just one of about 1,200 sealed files going back to 2000 under court review. Wynne, the presiding judge, directed the review to determine what should be made public under the revised rules.