Our View: Wrong man for job
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire has made an odd choice for chairman of the state’s new Sunshine Committee.
The Legislature created the panel – officially the Public Records Exemption Accountability Committee – to review the growing number of official records that can be withheld from the public.
The governor appoints six of the 13 members, including the chairman. You’d expect a job like that to go to someone demonstrably committed to open government, but she gave it to Seattle City Attorney Tom Carr.
Carr has been no champion of public disclosure. He crafted the argument under which the state Supreme Court declared that local governments can keep public documents secret on grounds of “attorney-client privilege,” even when a lawyer’s involvement is minimal and no courtroom strategy is involved.
Carr also fielded Seattle’s response to a newspaper request for records of DUI cases involving police officers. Out of 270 municipalities that were asked for such records by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle’s response was far and away the most heavily redacted, according to attorney Greg Overstreet, formerly the open-government ombudsman for Attorney General Rob McKenna.
The Legislature itself hasn’t always been a friend to open government over the 35 years since Washington voters approved the Public Disclosure Act. From 10 original exemptions written into the public records section of that initiative, the list has grown to more than 300.
That is why McKenna pushed aggressively for a committee to study those exemptions and make informed recommendations to the Legislature as to which if any of them actually serve the public interest. Even as the bill he requested was making its way through the legislative process last winter, more exemptions continued to be proposed in Olympia.
Just like roads and bridges, the civic infrastructure on which government accountability travels deteriorates over time and needs to be restored. That’s the task the Sunshine Committee is expected to undertake, starting with a recognition that exemption has gone too far and needs to be scaled back.
Now, however, the chairmanship of the panel is bestowed on a lawyer known for his battles to withhold public information. Overstreet says he can’t imagine a more polarizing candidate for the job.
When Washington citizens drafted Initiative 276 in 1972, it was out of deep frustration over the public’s inability to find out what its supposedly representative government was up to. The backers wanted to know who was bankrolling political campaigns and who was plying officials with meals and entertainment. They wanted government meetings to be open and records to be accessible.
The citizens prevailed at the polls, but the relentless foes of openness have been grinding away at that work ever since. McKenna saw the need for maintenance, and he convinced lawmakers to go along.
In her announcement on Monday, Gregoire urged the committee to “keep in mind the purpose of our state’s original public disclosure laws.” Good advice. Had she heeded it herself, she would have chosen a different chairman.