Act Opened The Door On Politics
State lawmakers adopted Washington’s Open Public Meetings Act in 1971.
The act forced state and local governing bodies to hold most of their debates in public. Before, they only voted in public; the political wrangling, compromises, trade-offs and arm-twisting could be done behind closed doors.
The law requires agencies to notify the public at least 24 hours before meeting and requires them to meet within the area that they govern. It defines a meeting as any gathering of a majority of the board, if business is discussed.
Those provisions in the act mean officials can’t make important decisions in a car, for instance, or while meeting on the other side of the state. They can socialize, but only if they don’t talk shop.
The law “changed things substantially,” said former state Sen. Nat Washington. “It made it so an executive session wasn’t just a routine matter.”
Washington, a retired attorney from Ephrata, was one of six sponsors of the 1971 bill. They included five Democrats and one Republican - three newspaper publishers and three attorneys.
If there’s one major flaw with the law, it’s that it requires no record of discussions allowed to take place in private, said Michael Killeen, a Seattle attorney who represents newspapers and citizens groups fighting for access to meetings.
Requiring that meetings be taped “would be a tremendous deterrent to violations,” said Killeen. Judges could review the tapes to determine whether the discussion was legal.
In Oregon, lawmakers added accountability by giving journalists access to closed meetings, as long as they maintain confidentiality.
“That poses a new dilemma,” said Jeff Ray, a television reporter who moved from Spokane to Portland last May. “I’m not always comfortable not reporting the things I hear.”
Retired Sen. Washington noted another flaw in the Washington’s open meetings laws: The Legislature exempted itself from the rules. Even the 1971 bill that created the law was written and discussed in private, in the House and the Senate.
, DataTimes MEMO: See related story under headline: The buck stops where?