Washington Considers Creating an Agency to enforce Open Meetings and Records Laws

The Washington state auditor, Brian Sonntag, and attorney general, Rob McKenna, have set up an open government task force to get at one of the big problems with Washington state open public meetings and records laws. Right now, the only way you can enforce them is to go to court.

A slew of references about current issues, controversies and potential solutions for issues about open government can be found at the attorney general's website.

Clearly, what a lot of members of the group seem to be moving toward is formation of an agency that enforces public records laws and open meetings laws. The idea is that there has to be something better than the current system. If I am unhappy with an agency's response in Washington, I have pretty much one choice: sue. And that means hiring a lawyer, dealing with courts, and delay. That's expensive and slow, as a famous case out of King County shows.

If the idea of an agency doing this sounds strange, it's actually not a new idea at all. The committee that met yesterday morning in Olympia got on the phone with the chief enforcement officer of Pennsylvania's open government laws, Terry Mutchler. She says that the agency has the power to command governments to follow the law and give citizens what they want. That certainly sounds appealing. And they also have credibility when they have to explain to citizens that certain records may not be available under the law. More information about what they are doing in Pennsylvania is available here.

The direct link to the Penn agency is here. Take a look. It's impressive.

Here's the handbook and guide for citizens

Here's something that anyone would find useful: A list of what requests have been approved, or not.

And here's something that at least *ought* to prevent lawsuits: informal mediation between the requestor and the agency.

The committee also discussed something that most of us never expected to come out of the public records act. There is a small, but significant group of people who file bizarrely huge numbers of records act requests that cities have to respond to. In Lakewood, we have one fellow who we figure costs us $40,000 a year in staff time. Ms. Mutchler of Pennsylvania said nearly every government she knows of has one of these folks.

It would only inflame these folks if I speculate on why they do it, and the reasons vary. Let's just say that even advocates for open government who were at the table in Olympia generally agree that this is a problem and, to an extent, real squandering of public resources. This problem is much trickier to solve, because citizens do have a right to inquire of their government.

And finally, for another view: A guy I used to work with who thankfully is still at The Olympian, Brad Shannon, wrote a news story about the meeting.

The committee will meet again in November to recommend something, presumably, to the Legislature. I'll post an update then.