Attorney general lays out agenda

By Brad Shannon | The Olympian • Published January 04, 2008

• Documents

Attorney General Rob McKenna outlined an ambitious legislative agenda Thursday that deals with cell-phone privacy, online child pornography, shared sick leave for domestic-violence victims and mortgage-foreclosure scams.

The Republican also is pushing for several changes to open-government laws when lawmakers return to Olympia for a 60-day session that begins Jan. 14.

One proposed bill would bar prison inmates from big legal awards in records cases. Another, co-written with Democratic Auditor Brian Sonntag, would force local governments to tape-record closed-door, or executive, sessions.

The taping legislation would let judges review conversations from government bodies' executive sessions and determine whether officials were abusing the law that shields some legal, real-estate and other discussions from public disclosure. Sonntag's staff found about 400 incidents of concern when doing agency and local government audits, McKenna said.

Toby Nixon, president of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, said the group favors the executive session taping measure, and Gov. Chris Gregoire also supports it. McKenna said he would not seek to change the $100 penalty for officials who violate the act.

Sen. Darlene Fairley, the Lake Forest Park Democrat who leads the Senate Government Operations and Elections Committee, said the records law proposals will get heard. But as a former city council member, she wants to hear what local governments think they need.

McKenna, who is running for re-election and has no major opponent, is following up on what he said is a high "batting average" for passing legislative proposals into law since he took office in 2005. Aides said he has sponsors for more than half of his proposals, which number more than a dozen, and he listed his top priorities as those dealing with public safety.

Some of his proposals would:

• Create a new crime of viewing child pornography, and allow noncommissioned officers who have forensic-analysis training to assist police in child-pornography investigations. The latter would let the aides participate without violating the act by viewing the evidence.