WA’s Sunshine Committee could dissolve as legislature ignores its public records recommendations
A 15-year-old Washington state committee tasked with reviewing Public Records Act exemptions for the Legislature may soon dissolve, after members met Tuesday to discuss its future.
“We haven’t been really encouraged by the Legislature. They seem to be going more toward being exempted themselves, so I’m not sure they really believe in open government, at least not for themselves…,” said Sunshine Committee Vice Chair and former House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, who sponsored the legislation that first created the committee.
Kessler added that she doesn’t think the committee is working the way that was intended.
“This year they’re being very upfront about wanting to be exempted,” Kessler said of the legislators. “I’m not sure how we deal with this at all, other than just forget it and just assume the Legislature is going to thwart and not go forward with anything positive that we’re trying to do here.”
The move by legislators to ignore recommendations from the Sunshine Committee comes as state lawmakers are attempting to use a legally untested exemption to shield themselves from releasing public records.
The purpose of the Sunshine Committee is to review all the exemptions from the Public Records Act to determine whether they should be maintained, eliminated or changed. They are tasked with issuing recommendations to lawmakers, but it is up to legislators to sponsor the bills and get them passed by the Legislature.
When the committee was enacted by law in July 2007, just over 300 public records exemptions existed in statute, said Linda Krese, former Snohomish County Superior Court Judge and current chair of the Sunshine Committee. That number has grown to more than 600 since then, and Krese said she suspects there are more that have been overlooked.
Krese said that she was struck by the fact that just over 300 exemptions were enacted in the 30 years since the Washington Public Records Act was first established by an initiative of the people in 1972, and that it only took 16 years to double the amount of exemptions.
“We can’t keep up with the rate that these things are being increased in terms of reviewing them,” Krese said.
Despite the fact that the Sunshine Committee issued only two recommendations this legislative session, no legislators chose to sponsor bills addressing either of them. Since the Washington Supreme Court held that lawmakers are subject to the Public Records Act in 2019, no proposed legislation from the committee has been passed.
“The Legislature is not interested in promoting transparency,” said attorney Katherine George. “We had some success before the Legislature itself was subject to the Public Records Act, but since that Supreme Court decision clarified that the Legislature has some obligation to be transparent itself, it has lost any enthusiasm for improving transparency.”
Rep. Larry Springer, D-Kirkland, also sits on the committee. On Monday he acknowledged that the bills suggested by the committee “don’t get traction” in the Legislature. The lawmaker has sponsored some of the committee’s bill’s in previous years, he said.
Springer speculated that the reason those bills don’t gain traction could be because the topic isn’t very interesting and doesn’t catch any other legislator’s “specific interest.” Or, the beneficiary of the exemption makes the case to not eliminate it, he said.
While Spinger didn’t sponsor any bills from the Sunshine Committee this year, the lawmaker sponsored a bill earlier this session to stall civil litigation against public records agencies for violations of the Public Records Act. That bill died, but could still be brought back next session.
On Monday night, the Washington Coalition for Open Government announced on Twitter that the Sunshine Committee’s Feb. 28 meeting agenda was revised to include a new item: “Should the Sunshine Committee consider whether to recommend modification or repeal” of the statute that created the panel? That agenda item was moved to be heard first at Tuesday’s meeting.
The Sunshine Committee will vote whether or not to dissolve at the next meeting scheduled for May 23.
This story was originally published February 28, 2023 at 2:24 PM with the headline "WA’s Sunshine Committee could dissolve as legislature ignores its public records recommendations."
