President Barack Obama didn’t waste any time last week putting federal agencies on notice that openness is the new order of the day.

“Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side, not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known,” he said Wednesday.

Democrats in Olympia would do well to take a cue from their guy in the White House. As a new era of transparency dawns in D.C., there are moves afoot in this Washington to draw the curtains tighter.

A notable exception is state Rep. Brendan Williams, D-Olympia, who received the Washington Coalition for Open Government’s Key Award in 2008. He has a trio of bills aimed at shoring up citizens’ access to public records.

House Bills 1105 and 1106 are Williams’ attempts to undo the damage done by a 2007 state Supreme Court decision that effectively handed public agencies broad powers to keep records under wraps forever and to preemptively sue people who have the gall to request them.

Williams’ third proposal, HB 1107, would bar another odious practice: Threats by the Washington Cities Insurance Authority to cancel cities’ liability insurance if they tell the public what their attorneys are telling them.

You’d think that the idea of underwriters dictating how public officials share information with their constituents would outrage legislators, but no. Not a single lawmaker has signed on to co-sponsor Williams’ bill.

The fight for public access to public information is often more defense than offense, but the onslaught this year is coming from some surprising sources.

Take state House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler of Hoquiam. She’s been a supporter of open government and a perennial sponsor of legislation to require public bodies to record their executive sessions.

But now comes HB 1316, a Kessler bill that would hand public agencies another way to head off public records requests: By labeling requesters harassers. If a government lawyer could convince a judge that someone is using a records request to interrupt government services or “annoy” a current or former public employee, the agency wouldn’t have to produce the records.

A possible justification for such legislation would be to help the state Department of Corrections with the very real problem of a few inmates who pervert open records laws to harass their jailers and judges.

But the Legislature was already considering a couple of bills – HB 1181 AND Senate Bill 5130 – to deal with the inmate problem.

Good arguments can be made for limiting the ability of incarcerated felons, who forfeit several civil rights that otherwise allow citizens to check government, to abuse public disclosure laws. But Kessler’s bill would apply to prisoners and law-abiding citizens alike.

That’s going too far. Public agencies already have the upper hand; her legislation would make it easier for government to use the specter of court and legal expenses to discourage public access.

Kessler does have other legislation aimed at promoting government transparency, but it’s neutered and probably doomed at that. HB 1017 and a companion measure in the Senate would create a committee to study creating a committee to police open records and meetings disputes. The state has a $6 billion budget shortfall; it can ill afford to create another board, much less fund a study to look into creating another board.

Just ask Sen. Darlene Fairley, D-Lake Forest Park. Her SB 5119 threatens to do away with the Sunshine Committee created by the Legislature two years ago to look at the more than 300 exceptions to the public disclosure law.

She says the committee hasn’t done enough for the $100,000 it has spent – an interesting argument considering Fairley hasn’t signed onto either SB 5294 or 5295, which would enact the committee’s suggested changes to the law. (Among those suggestions is the much-needed closure of a loophole that allows governments to evade public scrutiny by lawyering up.)

But Fairley doesn’t seem to be trying to ease access. She’s also pushing bills to increase the fees charged for public records requests.

In his order to federal agencies last week, Obama declared that in the face of doubt, openness will prevail. “A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency,” he wrote. Those are words for state government to live by too.