A looming disaster for public access

A state Senate committee yesterday wrongly backed Chairman Jim Kastama's attempt to slam shut a critical door to the public's business.

Kastama's disastrous amendment makes a bad bill worse, creating all kinds of new opportunity for government agencies to keep their actions from the public eye. The amendment essentially codifies last year's misguided state Supreme Court ruling that permits school boards, city councils and public commissions to invoke attorney-client privilege almost willy-nilly.

If a House committee doesn't pass a more public-friendly bill by today's deadline, the only hope is to drastically amend the Senate bill on the floor — or kill it outright.

Before the court ruling, a lawyer for a public agency was considered to be a lawyer for all the people in the public jurisdiction, not a lawyer solely for the board's or council's purposes. To keep a requested document from the public, the agency had to cite a controversy, such as the threat of a lawsuit.

Under the amended Senate Bill 5735, that protection for the public is stripped.

It is ironic this proposal is getting any traction at all. Last year's Legislature made sweeping policy changes protecting children from predatory teachers after The Seattle Times brought the problem to light. Times staffers said much of the information in the national award-winning series, "Coaches who prey," would have been nearly impossible to learn under Kastama's standard. School districts that refer investigations of a teacher's sexual misconduct to an outside law firm, an employee who happens to be a lawyer or even an investigator hired by a lawyer could easily shield the findings from the district's students and parents.

Not only newspapers are concerned about this proposal. Public activist organizations, from WashPIRG to the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, also dread the changes.

Attorney General Rob McKenna had the right impulse to clarify questions raised by last year's Supreme Court ruling through legislation. Yesterday, he said he would work to narrow the attorney-client privilege as the bill moves through the process. But even his bill's original wording is too narrow to ensure the public has access to its government's inner workings.

This bill, especially as amended, has morphed into a disaster for public access.

It needs to be dramatically amended or killed.