Judge Reverses His Own Ruling in Prisoner's Public Records Request Case

The Tri-City Herald reports that a Franklin County judge reversed his earlier ruling that a prisoner, Allan Parmalee, could not have pictures of prison guards.

Secrecy Is Not Required

This piece from the (Centralia) Chronicle makes the point that government decision making, even though parts of it can be conducted in closed executive sessions, is not required to be shielded from the public.

There is an urban legend out there that if something can be addressed in executive session that it is "secretized"--no discussion of any kind of the topic, no disclosure of the documents involved. Not true.

Local Candidates' Views on Taping Bill

The (Aberdeen) Daily World writes this on local candidates' views on the taping bill.

Note one of the candidate's restroom hysterics.

Lottery Winners' Identity Finally Made Public

This fascinating story from the Yakima Herald-Republic describes the extraordinary efforts lottery winners took to prevent disclosure of their identity.

The government agency involved, the Lottery Commission, was squarely on the side of full disclosure. (Yes, og-blog often criticizes government agencies, but also gives them credit when credit is due.)

Irony alert: The lottery winners didn't want anyone to know they won, but their suit to prevent disclosure of their names is now in the Yakima newspaper, just about every other paper in the state via the Associated Press, and on TV.

Allied Law Group's Greg Overstreet is quoted in the story about how sealing the court records at issue violated the court rules.

Olympian Editorial on Budget and Spending Transparency

This editorial from The Olympian describes why a new law requiring transparency in the state budget and spending process is a good thing.

This law is such a good idea, and potentially embarrasses those who run things, that we were totally surprised it passed.

Cities' Lobby Group to Oppose Taping Bill

Not too much of a surprise, but here is the Association of Washington City's legislative agenda.

By the way, did you notice that the taping bill is almost the only legislative proposal from the cities that does not involve asking for huge sums of money. Their legislative agenda seems to be "Give us lots and lots of money but you can't record our secret deliberations to find out how we're operating."