Open government questions in Olympia need answers soon
Washington legislators often don’t see eye to eye with news media professionals who badger them to conduct the public’s business in public. Likewise, journalists don’t appreciate elected officials’ instinctive resistance to our badgering.
But there are two points on which both sides agree.
First, state leaders faceplanted late in the 2018 session when they hastily, clumsily and secretively tried to change the ground rules of transparency. In a recent meeting with the TNT Editorial Board, House Minority Leader J.T. Wilcox, R-Yelm, used the word “fiasco” to describe legislators’ 48-hour push to exempt themselves from the state Public Records Act (PRA). Others on both sides of the aisle have used similar terms.
Second, it’s critical to get some definitive resolution on what records can and can’t be blocked from public view. And those answers need to come soon.
While lawmakers have stalled in making that happen, at least the state Supreme Court is on the right track. A ruling signed Tuesday by Court Commissioner Michael Johnston granted a direct review of a decision issued by a trial court judge in January — a decision that was largely favorable to a coalition of news organizations suing for records the Legislature refuses to disclose.
That means the case will skip the Appeals Court and move immediately to the Supreme Court, as the plaintiffs and defendants both requested.
To decide once and for all whether the legislative branch is subject to the PRA, Johnston said, “is a reasonably debatable issue of first impression of statewide significance.” He added that it qualifies as "a fundamental and urgent issue of broad public import.”
Amen to that.
Of course, we believe Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Lanese got it right in January; he ruled legislators are violating the 46-year-old law by withholding personal calendars, emails, sexual harassment complaints, investigative reports and other public records. We can’t fathom why the law would apply to city councils, county offices, school boards and state agencies, but not to the Legislature.
And yet caucus leaders, as if compelled by a vampiric fear of sunlight, exercised their right to appeal.
The media coalition also appealed one part of Lanese’s decision, which says the Legislature, House and Senate as institutions aren’t subject to the PRA — only individual legislators are. (The 10-member coalition is led by the Associated Press and includes The News Tribune.)
A court date hasn’t been scheduled, but it’s clearly in the public interest for the nine justices to hear the case soon. Election season is underway, a new crew of lawmakers will start learning the ropes before long and core principles of open government shouldn’t be left to chance.
Meanwhile, clarifying and fortifying rules of statehouse accountability should not fall to the Supreme Court alone. Legislators have work to do and need to quit dawdling.
Three months ago, after they rammed through their misbegotten PRA exemption without public hearings, they seemed to return to their senses. Jolted by a blitzkrieg of thousands of phone calls and emails from angry citizens, and faced with a veto from Gov. Jay Inslee, caucus leaders pledged to form a task force and get busy on a compromise.
The goal: to balance the people’s right to know with other considerations, such as constituent privacy and legislative records-management duties. Presumably there would be public input along the way.
It hasn’t happened.
“I have not heard a thing from anybody,” said Toby Nixon, president of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, an advocacy group that should be at the bargaining table right now, developing recommendations alongside journalists and lawmakers. “
It does concern me,” Nixon told the Seattle Times Editorial Board.
It concerns us, too.
Let’s hope the Supreme Court’s sense of urgency proves to be contagious.
This story was originally published May 31, 2018 at 2:58 PM with the headline "Open government questions in Olympia need answers soon."