The Public Records Exemptions Accountability Committee, also known as the Sunshine 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.
The state advisory committee’s assignment was simple: Comb through existing state law and identify which of the 300-plus exemptions to the state’s public records disclosure law should be repealed.
The committee seemed doomed from the outset. The first thing Gov. Chris Gregoire did was appoint Seattle City Attorney Tom Carr as chairman. Carr was a supporter of secrecy in government, not a fan of openness. Greg Overstreet, the former open government ombudsman for McKenna, was right when he said that the governor couldn’t have picked “a more polarizing figure.”
The Sunshine Committee never had the staff or resources to do a decent job. It’s no wonder the committee has failed to live up to expectations and why lawmakers have been dismissive of committee recommendations.
First, some history.
Washington state led the way back in the early 1970s when, through a citizens’ initiative, voters said they want an open and transparent government.
With the passage of Initiative 276, citizens recognized that public officials – whether it is a statewide elected official, county commissioner, city councilor, school trustee or fire commissioner – are the mere custodians of public records. The actual records, as the name indicates, belong to the citizens of the state of Washington and those records should be easily accessible to anyone from the public who wants to inspect them.
In 1972, forward thinking state voters – 72 percent of them – approved I-276 creating the state’s Public Disclosure Act. The introduction to the Public Records Act quite eloquently states: “The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them. 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. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have created.”
Unfortunately, over the years, the Legislature and the courts have whittled away at the public’s right to know. The original initiative had 10 narrow exemptions to the law – such as allowing government officials to keep secret their national security plans or pending real estate transactions. Personnel matters also were exempt.
But in the last 40 years, those 10 exemptions to the Public Records Act have mushroomed to more than 300 exemptions.
One of our pet peeves was pushed through by former Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson. The Olympian sued her to force release of local WASL scores. The newspaper won when a local judge said WASL scores were public records and thus should be available for public inspection.
Bergeson’s response was to sneakily approach the Legislature with an amendment to allow the superintendent of public inspection to decide when and where to release WASL scores. It was an underhanded move and the kind of exemption the Sunshine Committee was expected to root out and erase.
But the sad truth is the Sunshine Committee has not rocked the government’s boat. Even modest proposals to re-establish the public’s right to know have been thwarted.
In fact the committee’s pace has slowed to the point where a couple of committee members say it’s at risk of being abolished by the Legislature.
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. Most of the panel’s suggestions – when it actually makes them – die.
That’s unfortunate.
We wish there was a mechanism in place where there had to be a vote in the House and Senate on committee recommendations to remove exemptions from the books. As things stand today, lawmakers can simply ignore the Sunshine Committee’s recommendations.
Back in the days when the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, a national grass-roots public watchdog organization, were powerful advocates of an open and transparent government, lawmakers were reluctant to push for more secrecy in government operations.
Not today.
There is no one outside of a few editorial boards and an occasional judge holding lawmakers accountable when they trample on the public’s right to know or put yet another set of public documents beyond the public’s reach.
If a grass-roots organization develops an initiative that strips away today’s exemptions and returns state law to the original disclosure ideals passed by voters 40 years ago, lawmakers will have only themselves to blame. In the meantime, the ineffective Sunshine Committee is the best thing state residents have for openness and transparency in government operations.
