RSSForum looks at importance of state open meetings laws
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YAKIMA, Wash. -- Laws governing public records and open meetings remain critical more than 35 years after they were approved by Washington voters, speakers at a forum on open government said Wednesday.
"You have that right to know what we are doing," said Tim Ford, the open government ombudsman for the state Attorney General's Office.
Ford was part of a panel of speakers organized by the Washington Coalition for Open Government, a nonpartisan group that advocates for improvements in the state's laws governing public meetings and records.
About 75 people, including several city, county and state elected officials, attended the two-hour presentation at the downtown Yakima branch of the Yakima Valley Regional Library system.
Other speakers were Deborah Estrada, city clerk and records officer in Sunnyside; Toby Nixon, president of the coalition and a former state representative; and state Rep. Norm Johnson, R-Yakima, who served for more than 25 years on city councils for Mabton, Toppenish and Yakima. Johnson was filling in for state Auditor Brian Sonntag, who couldn't attend.
The forum was sponsored by the Yakima County League of Women Voters and the Yakima Herald-Republic.
Nixon spent part of the forum outlining the state laws on open records and public meetings by state and local agencies. Voters approved both measures in the early 1970s as part of an effort to make government more transparent for the public.
"The people who wrote and passed that initiative were very prescient and forward-thinking," Ford said.
The original list of records exemptions covered 10 areas -- including certain personnel matters and property transfers -- but has since grown to exclude more than 300 specific records from disclosure, speakers said.
That has much to do with the state's increased regulation of private businesses and efforts to protect their proprietary information, Ford said. A special committee is reviewing all the exemptions to determine whether they need to be updated.
However, the original intent of the act remains intact.
"It means we are there to help you get answers to your questions," Estrada told the audience.
She and Johnson said that training of government personnel in disclosure standards remains an issue, and Estrada suggested that legislators should consider how to fund making training more widely available.
Both said they would support the tape-recording of closed-door sessions by city councils and other government panels. Two recent legislative proposals to implement that change have failed to pass the Legislature due to broad opposition.
Under the draft legislation, a judge would be able to review the recording to determine whether the law had been violated.
* Mark Morey can be reached at 509-577-7671 or mmorey@yakimaherald.com.
YHR is going to pound this story for four more months. Good luck with that!
Report ViolationOpen government is important and newsworthy. You don't agree, lobo? You would rather have closed government?
Report ViolationThis is how the liberal media works with democrats. Failed liberal politician Ron Bonlender files a frivolous law suit against his political enemies (including one who beat him in the last election). The lawsuit goes nowhere and ends up being settled out of court at the taxpayers' expense. This gives the Herald an excuse to run endless articles on open government to constantly remind the public of the allegations. The Herald then decides to sponsor meetings on "open government" (as a public service of course), giving them another excuse to keep the issue in the headlines. At the same time, another Democrat (Sonia Rodriguez, who was not elected) just happens to propose a new ethics code. The ethics code doesn't even address the Open Public Meetings Act, but somehow the Herald finds a way to remind us of Ron Bonlender's allegations:
"One thing noticeably absent from the Richland ordinance is any language dealing with Open Public Meetings Act violations.
In May, four members of the Yakima City Council -- Rick Ensey, Kathy Coffey, Micah Cawley and Bill Lover -- were hit with a lawsuit alleging a violation of that act. Public records indicated that Ensey and Coffey had lined up the support of Cawley and Lover, through a series of
e-mails outside of the public eye, to change the city's budget policy.
The council rescinded the change within days, and the suit was settled early this month, with the city paying $2,500."
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