We warned lawmakers not to skirt the public. Now the state is getting sued | Editorial

For years state legislators have been allowed to file title-only bills in order to get around transparency rules. It is an appalling practice, and it needs to end.

The media and political watchdog groups have criticized the sly maneuver time and again to no avail.

But the legislative trick now has sparked a lawsuit against the state, and lawmakers should realize — finally — they cannot continue skirting public process.

The Washington State Constitution, in order to prevent last-minute legislation with no public review, requires that bills be introduced at least 10 days before the final adjournment of the Legislature.

An exception is if two-thirds of lawmakers agree that a bill should be introduced after the deadline. But that’s a tough threshold, especially during the final stretch of the legislative session.

To get around the law, legislators introduce title-only bills as place holders for legislation they want to push through later. These bills have a vague title and a number and nothing else — no description whatsoever.

By submitting legislation with a heading like, “An Act Relating to Revenue,” and no summary, lawmakers are able to beat the 10-day rule and add details to bills later.

Often, those details are controversial, and definitely should have been revealed long before the end of the legislative session.

One of those title-only bills that should not have been rushed through during the last legislative session set a tax increase on out-of-state banks.

The specific language wasn’t released until the day before it came up for a vote at 4:14 a.m. the day before the session ended.

It appears the bill’s proponents did not want to deal with opposition — a sorry excuse for keeping the bill under the public radar.

At the time, Sen. Mark Mullett, D-Issaquah, chairman of the Senate banking committee predicted there would be a lawsuit if the bill went through.

He was right.

On Nov. 5, the Washington Bankers Association and the American Bankers Association filed a lawsuit in King County against the state Department of Revenue, asking the court to invalidate House Bill 2167.

The measure increases the business and occupation tax on financial institutions with an annual net income of at least $1 billion, which affect 20 institutions, all based outside the state.

The groups argue the legislation violates the state constitution and the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, and that it also “suffered from a flawed legislative process.”

Specifically, the lawsuit argues that because the content of the bill was unknown until the last two days of the session, it violated the 10-day rule in the state constitution.

Lawmakers, though, have been violating that rule with title-only bills for so long they may not realize how unacceptable the practice is.

And now the state is getting sued.

In the past, some lawmakers have defended using title-only bills as a way to get a bill submitted on time when the language still needs to be finalized.

More often than not, however, it’s become a way to ram through unpopular legislation outside of the public spotlight. And that goes completely against the spirit of open government.

It is time lawmakers stop exploiting technical loopholes in the law and ban the practice of allowing title-only bills.

This story was originally published November 21, 2019 at 7:00 AM.