P-I Story on Testimony on Taping Bill and Great McKenna Quote

The P-I posts this account of the testimony on Monday evening for and against the bill to require governing bodies to record executive sessions.

One part of the story jumped off the screen. Attorney General Rob McKenna was testifying in support of the bill. A legislator told him that there are thousands of public meetings every year and not too many violations so why impose a burdensome requirement like recording. To which McKenna responded:

"The fact is that you'll hear a lot of arguments tonight that are really arguments against having [a] public records act and a public meetings act. If you extend them far enough it would be the same logic as saying 'Well, there are thousands of meetings and very few of them result in violations so we don't need the law.' If it had been up to folks in government we wouldn't have our sunshine laws today."

Exactly.

The Olympian Editorializes in Support of Raising Open Meetings Penalties

The Olympian writes this editorial supporting House Bill 2567 to raise the penalty for violating the Open Public Meetings Act from the current $100 to $1000. They say:

"It’s too easy for elected officials to violate this state’s Open Public Meetings Act. Weighing the punishment against the crime, it’s tempting for public servants to take the risk of an illegal, closed-door session. That’s because the fine for breaking the open meetings law is a paltry $100 — the same amount set by lawmakers when the law was passed in 1971."

P-I Story on Open Meetings Taping Bill--and Call to Action

The P-I writes this story on the bill to require a recording of a closed executive session of a public meeting.

The bill is House Bill 3292 and it's sponsored by the Democratic Majority Leader and the Republican Minority leader and apparently supported by Gov. Gregoire. It's a bill requested by Attorney General McKenna (R), and State Auditor Sonntag (D). If all of these people can agree on something it must be good.

You can contact your legislator by email and let him or her know you support HB 3292. It's amazing what a handful of emails to a legislator can do to pass a law. It will only take a few seconds to send the email. Time is running out to pass bills out of committee.

Interesting Blog on Local Gov't Corruption

Local Government Watch (Washington) is a blog of news stories about local government misdeeds (or alleged misdeeds) in our state. Og-blog readers might find this site interesting because most of the stories on Local Government Watch were made possible by public records or open meetings.

When you are reading stories about individual local governments doing bad things, keep some perspective: there are about 2,500 units of local government in Washington state. Some are bad, some are good, and most are somewhere in between. This is why we need public records and open meetings--to tell the good from the bad and keep all of them accountable.

Pick-A-Party Primary: Your Pick Is Public

Washington's relatively new closed primary requires a voter to declare allegiance (at least for that primary) to only one party and limit his or her vote to candidates from that party. Yuck. Declaring allegiance to a political party (even for one election) is so un-Washington. Voters in Washington are independent-minded ticket-splitters so limiting your primary vote to just one party seems like taking away part of your right to vote. (It kind of is, but that's a topic for someone else's blog.)

Back to the topic of this blog. The (Aberdeen) Daily World reports that a person's choice of political party is a public record. A person's choice of candidate is not a public record, just which party's ballot he or she selected.

Did Puyallup Violate Open Meetings Law?--Update

This Tacoma News-Tribune story looks at whether the City of Puyallup violated the Open Public Meetings Act when it decided to hire a city manager. Some city council members say they "reached an informal consensus on the matter privately," which would be illegal. Other council members deny it.

The story quotes Michele Earl-Hubbard of Allied Law Group.

Update: The TNT adds some newly-discovered details in this February 5, 2008 story.