What’s the point of government of the people, by the people and for the people if it isn’t accessible to the people?

That’s a question for the Washington Legislature in general and the Senate Government Operations and Elections Committee in particular. This week that committee took a bill meant to improve access to government records and transformed it into one that does the opposite. Numerous city, county and school officials across the state will celebrate the extra insulation this move would give them from public inspection, but responsible citizens should be dismayed.

Last May the Washington state Supreme Court handed public entities a wild-card strategy for withholding documents from public disclosure requests. The court held, in a case known as Hangartner vs. city of Seattle, that documents don’t have to be turned over to citizens who request them if they reflect communications between a public agency and its legal counsel.

Attorney-client privilege is a legitimate concept. It allows an attorney and client to talk confidentially about a pending or likely court action. But it shouldn’t be a guise for a public agency to keep its own records secret by getting its lawyer involved. That, however, is what the Hangartner ruling did, ignoring state law’s strong commitment to openness.

In a harsh dissent, Supreme Court Justice Charles Johnson said the ruling “does not come close to conforming to the PDA’s (Public Disclosure Act’s) mandate for broad public disclosure.”

The Hangartner decision hung on a skimpy 5-4 majority, but that was enough to board up another window in the governmental glass house Washington citizens tried to erect more than a quarter-century ago.

It’s been a quarter-century of erosion, however, which is why new Attorney General Rob McKenna proposed legislation this year to narrow the growing body of exemptions to disclosure. McKenna didn’t suggest eliminating the attorney-client ploy, but his measure would have stiffened fines for violators and would have prevented agencies from denying requests they considered too broad.

It wasn’t a perfect bill, but it was a step in the right direction – until Government Operations and Elections Chairman Jim Kastama offered an amendment that basically puts the Hangartner ruling in statute. If you thought that the public attorneys who are hired with your tax dollars are there to represent your – the public’s – interests, guess again. They are to be treated as counsel to the government officials whose performance in office can now largely be concealed from public view by claiming attorney-client privilege.

The Senate bill has been corrupted. It was meant to open government, but Kastama’s amendment “closed it more than ever,” said House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler. A House version, sponsored by Kessler, may now become the bill that open-government advocates count on to secure whatever improvements they can get – even if they have to leave the attorney-client privilege contest for another day.

In the 1970s, Washington proudly pioneered open-government laws that held public officials and agencies up to public inspection. Defenders of that ideal now must fight a rear-guard action against government entities who would prefer to douse the lights. State lawmakers need to decide whose side they’re on.