Government drops plan to move Northwest archives out of Seattle

SEATTLE (AP) - The Biden administration has reversed a decision by its predecessor to sell the federal archives building in Seattle, following months of opposition in Alaska, Washington and Oregon - and a lawsuit.

The federal Office of Management and Budget has withdrawn its approval for the sale, which would have forced the transfer of millions of Pacific Northwest records to facilities in Kansas City, Missouri, and Riverside, California.

A federal judge already had blocked the sale in response to a lawsuit by the states of Washington and Oregon and more than two dozen Native American and Alaska Native tribes including the Juneau-based Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

Washington state’s two U.S. senators, both Democrats, and Alaska’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, all had urged the Biden administration to reverse course on the sale.

“The process that led to the decision to approve the sale of the Federal Archives and Records Center is contrary to this administration’s tribal-consultation policy, and I am accordingly withdrawing OMB’s approval of the sale of that facility,” Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget Shalanda Young wrote April 8.

Among the records at the center are the histories of 272 federally recognized tribes in Washington, Alaska, Oregon and Idaho, as well as all federal records dating back to the 1840s generated in the Pacific Northwest, including military, land, court, tax and census documents.

Many of the Alaska historical records had been held in Anchorage, but the National Archives closed the facility in 2014 and moved most everything to Seattle.

The proposed sale of the Seattle property was among the decisions taken in the final months of the administration of then-President Donald Trump.

A federal judge said Feb. 12 that the government could have avoided a “public relations disaster” if it had “displayed some sensitivity” to how the closure affected the Northwest.

Having declared the 10-acre site as surplus, the Trump administration had planned to close down the only federal archives building in the Northwest.

Only a tiny fraction of the records have been digitized, and the facility is frequently used for research of genealogy, land use and water rights, treaties and other historical topics.

Any future sale of the facility would have to begin with a new process, including tribal consultation as well as a new factual record, Young said.