But the advisory group’s work is now moving so slowly that two members say the low-budget committee is at risk of being killed off by lawmakers.
“This is going to be the demise of this committee, if we are not producing,” Republican Sen. Pam Roach of Auburn said last week during a meeting of the Public Records Exemptions Accountability Committee. Roach called herself one of the panel’s “biggest defenders” in the Legislature and fears it will be eliminated.
Democratic Sen. Adam Kline of Seattle told the committee that it is not popular with many lawmakers and that it does face the risk of extinction.
The Public Records Exemptions Accountability Committee was created in 2007 at the request of Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna and with support from leading Democrats such as Lynn Kessler, the former House majority leader from Hoquiam who also sits on the committee.
Only one batch of the committee’s recommendations has ever been written into law by the Legislature, said Mary Tennyson, senior assistant attorney general who advises the committee. That was in 2010 with passage of Senate Bill 5295, which carried eight recommendations.
In fact, most of the panel’s suggestions – when it actually makes them – die.
And over the years, the most controversial topics – how far attorney-client privilege should extend for government lawyers, and whether lawmakers should be able to shield their email and other documents from disclosure – haven’t moved very far with the panel, despite showing up over and over on agendas.
Often a lawmaker-member is absent from a committee meeting, so touchy topics are tabled for another day.
Challenges or not, Kessler and Rowland Thompson, executive director for Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington, are two committee members who think it has a future.
Thompson said the group’s work should be measured by the reviews it is making of legal exemptions that have piled up in the nearly 40 years since Initiative 276 was passed in 1972.
That law created the open public records and open meetings acts, and since then 10 exemptions have mushroomed to more than 300.
“It serves a function to go through an examination of records disclosures that haven’t been looked at for decades. … Everyone has to justify their existence in some way. We are doing more of that now,” Thompson said, adding that other state review committees don’t see a lot of their recommendations pass the Legislature either.
In the one bill that did pass, eight of the year’s less controversial recommendations were rolled together.
The single bill narrowed an exemption for documents in child-mortality reviews, clarified that only statistical data from State Wellness Program documents can be disclosed, and clarified that lists of candidates for directors of the state recreation and conservation board and for the Work Force Training board are open to the public.
Tim Ford, public-records ombudsman for the attorney general and a member of the committee, said Roach “has some valid concerns about the speed at which the committee works.” But he thinks the committee’s new chairman, retired Yakima County judge Michael Schwab, can make a difference.
Gov. Chris Gregoire appointed Schwab, despite having proposed eliminating the committee a couple of years ago. Schwab said he told Gregoire he was willing to do the job if he could get the panel to move forward.
“I intend to work very hard to make sure it has life to it,” Schwab said. At the same time, he said, “You need to be thorough. You don’t want to be sloppy or not thoughtful.”
“The judge is excellent. This is his second meeting. He is getting a taste of how the committee likes to table things and defer action,” Ford said.
The committee will meet again Sept. 28, and that might be the last date available this year to act on recommendations, because key staffers are absent in October and the committee must send its recommendations to the Legislature by Nov. 15.
So far, the committee has approved exactly one recommendation – to exempt state Labor and Industry documents for injured worker claims.
It has not yet agreed on language dealing with exemptions for information about child victims of sexual assaults or of medical-malpractice reports turned over, by law, to the Office of the Insurance Commissioner every year.
At issue is how much of the closed claims information from public hospitals and public clinics and self-insured institutions should be exempt from public disclosure.
Retired newspaper publisher Frank Garred of Port Townsend proposed language that would ensure that settlement information from such public entities would not be exempt.
Brad Shannon: 360-753-1688
bshannon@theolympian.com
www.theolympian.com/politicsblog
