Did you hear the one about the government executive who started a new job and four days later the board voted to hire him?

Well, it’s no joke and it happened right here in River City.

The peculiar hiring of William Dameworth in 2006 as director of the Spokane Regional Clean Air Agency is but one example of the secret machinations that occur behind closed government doors. Four other cases are being targeted by Spokane’s Center for Justice and two West Side attorneys in an attempt to spread the word about serial violations of the state’s open meetings laws.

The timing is perfect, because it comes during Sunshine Week, a media-created event that shines light in the dark corners of government. As famed Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis once said, “Sunshine is the best disinfectant.”

Dameworth’s predecessor as director of the clean-air agency, Eric Skelton, had quit in frustration, citing the board’s lack of commitment to its environmental mission. So public interest in his replacement was high. However, a state auditor’s report says three out of five board members met privately for weeks as part of a search team. The Center for Justice says in a lawsuit that the clean-air board then voted in private to hire Dameworth. When questioned, the board voted in public, but not until Dameworth had spent four days on the job.

At the time, board President Matthew Pederson said there was no private vote but there was a feeling of “consensus.” Then when the board emerged from the private meeting, Pederson offered the job to Dameworth. When no board members objected, he interpreted that as a unanimous vote.

OK, maybe this is a joke.

Reaching a consensus without voting is quite a trick, voting without casting a vote is even better, but this is hardly the lone example of governmental sleight-of-hand. The state auditor’s office discovered about 500 open-meeting irregularities during a statewide review.

And the secrecy doesn’t end there. Citizens making legitimate public records requests are routinely denied documents or charged illegal fees. The only recourse is to file lawsuits, but even if government officials lose, the fines are minimal and the money comes from taxpayers.

The federal government isn’t exactly responsive, either. An open government audit released Monday by the National Security Archive found that many federal agencies have failed to comply with President Bush’s 2005 executive order to cut the backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests. Some of the agencies’ backlogs had actually increased and 200,000 requests were still pending.

Obviously there are a lot of public officials who scurry from the disinfectant of sunshine. They will continue to toil in the shadows until the public demands they lift the shades.