The House has voted unanimously – 70-0 – in favor of HB 273, the bill to expand the Idaho Open Meeting law to include boards, commissions or councils created by executive order. “We go to great lengths as public officials … that we hold open meetings,” said Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Iona. “We are subject to the Open Meetings Law in Idaho. Sometimes it’s not very comfortable, Mr. Speaker, to do all of our business in public, but it’s the right thing to do.”

“We’ve always assumed that virtually everything that government does in the state of Idaho is open to the public, and always operated with that assumption,” he said. “However, we discovered that there is just a little flaw in our law, that unwittingly exempts certain agencies that are created by executive order from the Open Meetings Law. It wasn’t intended to be that way, should not be that way.”

Loertscher said, “This is something that we need to do.” The most common reaction he said he’s gotten to the proposal has been, “You mean, it’s not that way? This corrects something that needs to be done.”

With that, every member of the House endorsed the bill, sending it to the Senate side.

Coincidentally, this is Sunshine Week, an annual event organized by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press that celebrates openness in government and access to public information; the event this year runs from March 12-17.