Keeping authorities honest
Published 3:24 pm Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Citizens in a democracy have an obvious need to know what government authorities are doing on their behalf. In Washington, they’ve reserved that right for themselves through open government laws.
Such laws protect the people’s access to official documents and other records, and their right to watch and participate in the lawmaking process, with limited exceptions — mostly involving matters of personnel, real estate transactions and litigation.
These laws underscore that in a democracy, the government exists to serve you, not the other way around.
How those laws are supposed to work, and how well they work in practice, will be discussed at a public forum from 6 to 8:30 p.m. this evening at Everett Station (3201 Smith Ave.). The event is sponsored by Washington Coalition for Open Government, the League of Women Voters of Snohomish County, the City of Everett and The Herald. Admission is free.
Laws aren’t enough to ensure open and accountable government. It takes a citizenry and press that is committed to keeping an eye on government, pushing back whenever officials try to cloak their activities. Take away such scrutiny, or the tools that make it effective, and soon you’ll have a government that isn’t accountable to anyone — and knows it. You’ll have a government that refuses to hear dissenting views; one that decides for itself what is good for the people to know.
Tonight’s forum will include discussion of the tensions that exist over open government, and what rights citizens can assert to keep government honest.
Most citizens, though, will never file a public records request. Relatively few ever attend a city council or school board meeting. They depend on news organizations to be their watchdog over government, a role most in the news media consider part of their core mission.
It’s in that role that this newspaper, along with almost two dozen other news organizations and trade groups, filed a brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold Washington’s open public records law against a challenge over the status of petition signatures.
An Arlington group sued in an effort to keep secret the names of people who signed a petition to overturn the state’s latest laws on domestic-partnership rights. They argue that making such information public would subject signers to harassment, constituting a violation of their right to free speech.
News organizations counter that a ruling in the plaintiffs’ favor would cause greater harm, creating a constitutional battle any time a public records request happens to involve the name of an individual, thus compromising a critical tool for keeping citizens informed. Plus, how can the public know whether petition signatures are counted correctly if the process isn’t transparent?
It’s a fascinating debate, and just one of many likely to come up at Everett Station tonight.
