The Legislature MUST do better on sunshine laws...

The Longview Daily News nails it with their take on Senate skullduggery on the matter of strengthening sunshine laws.



House must not concur with Senate's changes

Apr 13, 2005 - 01:29:29 am PDT

The state Senate's attempt to strengthen Washington's sunshine laws late Monday became a serious threat to public access to government records. Two amendments approved just before the bill's passage would carve out huge exemptions in the state open records law for the correspondence and papers of legislators and sex offender records.

These eleventh-hour additions to the House-approved legislation are a deal breaker for advocates of open government. The House must not concur with the changes. The exemptions would effectively sabotage efforts to repair the damage done to public access guarantees by a Supreme Court ruling last spring.

The legislation was an incomplete fix to begin with. It addressed only part of the court's surprising decision --- the part that said government agencies can ignore public records request if they are too broad or general. The bill would remove "overbroadness" as a justification for denying public access to documents. But neither the House nor the Senate chose to deal with the court's broad use of attorney-client privilege as a justification for denying requests for public records.

The House-approved bill may have amounted to just half a loaf, but it promised to do no harm. That certainly cannot be said of this Senate legislation.

More...