So-called Sunshine

The view from the state's Sunshine Committee is looking overcast after its latest meeting to review exemptions to the state's public-records law.

At issue is whether the committee should recommend legislation to fix the law after disastrous state Supreme Court rulings expanded government's ability to cite attorney-client privilege in rejecting public records requests.

Member Adam Kline, a state senator from Seattle, suggested the committee make no recommendation — essentially leaving in place a broader means for agencies to block the public's view of their government's operations.

The 2004 ruling in the case of Hangartner v. City of Seattle was the first ruling that gave agencies broad cover to deny public-records requests even when there was no controversy. This standard forgets that the job of government lawyers is to look out for the interests not only of the elected officials or agency bureaucrats who hired them, but for the broader constituency of citizens who pay the salaries or per diems of the whole lot.

The so-called Sunshine Committee is charged with evaluating the merits of the state's more than 300 exemptions to the state's public-records law.

For the panel to make no recommendation to remedy this giant loophole would be a gloomy forecast for open government.