State Attorney General Rob McKenna and Auditor Brian Sonntag are encouraging legislators to support changes to the state constitution that they say would increase government transparency and accountability.

The recommendations endorsed by McKenna and Sonntag were proposed last year by the Washington Policy Center (WPC), a conservative think tank. They would:

• Require 72-hour public notice before any bill receives a public hearing.
• Prohibit any public hearings or votes for title-only bills.
• Prohibit votes on the final passage of a bill until the final version of the document has been available to the public for at least 24 hours.

“These basic reforms will build the public trust and ensure that government is open and accountable to the public,” the attorney general and state auditor wrote in a recent letter to legislators.

The WPC published a report in June 2010 that critiqued the transparency of the previous legislative session, claiming that lawmakers often waived legislative rules that require a five-day public notice before a bill hearing and that they gave inadequate public notice on when and where hearings would be held and what they were about, among other grievances.

Jason Mercier, WPC’s Center for Government Reform director, said several lawmakers were supportive of the proposal, but was unsure whether any would introduce it as a bill in this session.

Mercier added that rules similar to those recommended by WPC can be found in the state constitutions of Florida, Ohio and Hawaii.