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Saturday, April 25, 2009

Bill Passes Giving Public Right to Comment at Public Meetings

What the heck?  An open-government bill passed in Olympia?  Is this for real?

Apparently so.  HB 1552 requires statebodies holding a meeting subject to the Open Public Meetings Act to allow the public to comment.  This press release explains it.

The bill passed the House and Senate unanimously.  It was sponsored by Rep. Joel Kretz (R-Okanagon), who is a very pro-open government legislator.  Nice work, Rep. Kretz.

The Governor needs to sign it for it to take effect.  Unanimous in the House and Senate almost always means a gubernatorial signature.

UPDATE: Bob Meinig of the Municipal Research Service Center corrected us by noting that state bodies, but not local bodies, are covered by the bill.  The original og-blog post said local bodies were covered.  Thank you for the correction.