From the conservative Washington Policy Center blog, Jason Mercier let’s us know that this morning the state’s Sunshine Committee — tasked with reviewing the need for hundreds of exemptions to the state’s Public Records Act — has recommended that the Legislature repeal their own exemption.

The committee is actually still meeting live right now, and you can watch on TVW, right here.

Unfortunately, I’m at home again today and wasn’t around to find out why state Sen. Adam Kline was the lone ‘No’ vote on this issue. It passed 8-1.

The change was proposed by Seattle City Attorney Tom Carr, often criticized for not being friendly to open government. But in this, Carr is arguing that the state Legislature exempting themselves from the sunlight is unfair. From his resolution calling for the change:

The Committee recommends that the legislature eliminate the Legislative exemption, which excludes from public scrutiny personal records of the legislature, including e-mails, correspondence, except when designated as a public record by a “official action of the Senate or House of Representatives.” Every other legislative body in the state of Washington is fully subject to the public records act. There is no principled reason why the state legislature should be exempt.

Says Mercier:

Now it is up to the Legislature to act on the Sunshine Committee’s recommendation next session.

Read his full blog post, right here.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 12:09 PM and is filed under OPEN GOVERNMENT, State. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.