Two summers ago, The Seattle Times and 16 other media organizations petitioned the state attorney general’s office to clarify public agencies’ responsibility to share records with people who request them.
Despite collaboration with AG Nick Brown’s office and his promising rules proposal announced last October, the process bogged down and the office’s communication with media petitioners slowed to a trickle until a revised proposal was published at the end of May.
Voters enacted the state Public Records Act by initiative in 1972. At the time, the new law permitted only a handful of exemptions from disclosure. Among them were exemptions related to an agency’s personnel issues or litigation. Over the years, the Legislature enacted hundreds more. In 2007, the Legislature established the Sunshine Committee to review exemptions and related issues. But the committee has become toothless thanks to the feckless indifference of legislators who ignore most proposals to make agencies more transparent.
The state of public records is dire in this state. For an assessment, check out the Washington Coalition of Open Government‘s 2025 “Your Right to Know” report.
That’s among the reasons media organizations asked the attorney general to more clearly spell out what is in the original law and how it should be interpreted by agencies — whether state agencies, city councils, school boards or hospital districts.
At a 3 p.m. hearing Tuesday in Olympia, the public can weigh in on the AG’s revised proposal in person or remotely. You can also submit written comments. To participate, go to: st.news/input.
As for the revised rules, open government advocates have concerns about some of the changes. In particular, the latest proposal backtracked on a higher bar for notifying third parties mentioned in a public disclosure that they can seek an injunction to bar release.
Such notifications should be very rare. Public documents belong to the people.
Once more with feeling, the wording from Washington’s voter-enacted Public Records Act:
The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have created.
