Public records belong to you
Why should you, a private citizen, have access to the documents and other records that government agencies collect?
Simple. They belong to you.
They’re public records, gathered by public agencies overseen by public officials. And you’re the public. The officials work for you, the buildings they occupy belong to you, and the records are collected in your name.
If the explanation seems obsessive and repetitive, that’s because it has to be. Today, more than 30 years after trail-blazing Washington voters passed Initiative 276, some people still don’t get it, that the public is entitled to examine public records. Those who fail to grasp this fundamental democratic tenet are often public officials.
Early this year, the Legislature, with a nudge from Attorney General Rob McKenna, took steps to clarify the expectations in the state Public Disclosure Act. They passed legislation that prohibits agencies from denying a public-records request on the grounds it is overbroad. And they gave the agencies the option of filling such requests in stages, rather than waiting until every document was ready to be turned over.
The legislation was necessary because the urge to keep records secret is so powerful and pervasive. It’s no mystery why the Public Disclosure Act came into being as a citizen initiative rather than an act of the Legislature itself. While the original law recognized that secrecy was justifiable under limited circumstances – real estate negotiations and litigation strategy, for example – the Legislature has dreamed up 70 new exemptions in the past three decades.
McKenna, elected last year, stressed that government should embrace the spirit of openness. The 2005 legislation not only shut down a couple of dodges popular among disclosure-resistant officials, it authorized the attorney general to draft model disclosure rules. Gathering public input about what those rules should say is one of the reasons for a series of forums McKenna is conducting around the state – the next being tomorrow evening at Spokane’s Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, sponsored by The Spokesman-Review.
Since it is the attorney general’s deputies who provide legal representation for state agencies, his leadership should assure that those agencies will respond to records requests forthrightly. Unfortunately, though, the agencies answer to other elected officials, primarily the governor, so the normal political pressure for secrecy will not disappear.
Open records laws, liberally applied, deprive officials of the ability to conceal uncomfortable information unless clear and compelling reasons force them to disclose. In fact, the default should be just the reverse: Records should be presumed open unless there are clear and compelling reasons to withhold them.
McKenna’s commitment to openness is laudable, but it’s no substitute for public vigilance. It took citizens to enact the Public Disclosure Act, and it will take citizens to secure it.