Lawmakers cast vote for secrecy

Suggested emergency legislation: Beginning immediately, all lawmakers must tape the following passage from Initiative 276 to their foreheads:

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.

Too extreme? After what happened in Olympia on Monday, we’re not so sure. Acting on a public records measure that had sailed through the House, state senators managed to reduce a half-a-loaf bill to crumbs by exempting legislators from its reach and adding a controversial barrier to sex offender information.

Now, the House must concur with those changes or try to remove them. Either way, the chance of adopting a decent bill that would open access to public records is diminishing.

At the outset of the legislative session, open government advocates had hoped lawmakers would adopt a bill that would undo the damage done when the state Supreme Court ruled that public records requests that are “too broad” could be ignored and that attorney-client privilege could be invoked in turning down requests.

At the behest of Attorney General Rob McKenna, the House passed a bill that removes “overbroadness” as an excuse to reject public records requests and increased fines for recalcitrant agencies. The bill does not address the attorney-client-privilege loophole, and that’s unfortunate because it is easily abused. Taxpayers may think that public attorneys work for them, but government officials too often use those attorneys to shroud their work.

Even so, the half measure that passed the House was progress. What is mind-boggling is that lawmakers had the audacity to exempt themselves.

Said Sen. Marilyn Rasmussen, D-Eatonville, who offered the exemption amendment: “It means that somebody can’t come in on a fishing trip and try to find out who called you, who talked to you and what was the nature of their business.”

If that’s such a good idea, then why not extend it to all public officials? Are legislators special? That aside, why must public officials treat access to public information as a nuisance? Are all requests “fishing trips”?

Initiative 276, which was adopted overwhelmingly by voters in 1972, guaranteed citizens access to the vast majority of government documents. It was triggered by government officials’ historic preference for secrecy. Since then, lawmakers have added about 70 exceptions to the original 10. And now, incredibly, some want to exempt themselves from changes they’ve endorsed.

Yes, taping the law’s key passage to legislators’ foreheads is tempting, because it just keeps slipping their minds.