Pressure increased this week on the Legislature to close a gaping loophole it enjoys in the state’s public records law.
By an 8-1 vote Monday, members of the state Sunshine Committee recommended repeal of an exemption to the law that allows legislators to keep certain records, including their e-mails, hidden from public scrutiny. No other legislative body in the state — city council, county council, school board, etc. — enjoys such a loophole, and there’s no reason state legislators should.
State lawmakers’ votes decide how billions of tax dollars are spent, and thus how voters’ values and priorities are reflected. The public has a clear interest in knowing that such decisions aren’t the product of favoritism to big donors, intimidation or duplicity. Lawmakers are representatives and servants of the people, just like other elected officials. They’re not entitled to special immunity from review by the citizens they serve.
As the state open records act states, “The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.”
Two current lawmakers who serve on the Sunshine Committee, Democrat Lynn Kessler and Republican Pam Roach, voted for repealing the legislative exemption. The lone no vote came from Sen. Adam Kline, a Democrat.
Kline argued that just as reporter shield laws protect newspaper sources, the legislative exemption protects whistleblowers who wish to bring wrongdoing to a lawmaker’s attention. But there’s a clear difference between the two, as was explained during Monday’s meeting by Rowland Thompson of Allied Daily Newspapers, also a member of the committee:
Unlike a newspaper, a private institution, a state legislator is acting on behalf of those who elected him, and they are subject to the Legislature’s collective decisions. Transparency the only effective check the public can use to ensure such decisions are free of taint.
Washington voters approved the Public Disclosure Act in 1972. At the time, it contained 10 exemptions. It now has about 300, and the Sunshine Committee’s charge is to examine those exemptions to see whether they’re justified. This one clearly isn’t.
What’s good for local legislative bodies is also good for the state Legislature. It’s time for lawmakers lead by example. When they reconvene in January, they should do so by repealing their own exemption to openness.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
