Folks seem to be all in an uproar over what they think is the Washington State Legislature’s need for secrecy. It seems that folks want them all out NOW or sooner for ostensibly obstructing the public’s right to information. The corporate media has the public convinced that there is foul play afoot. Hermann Goering would be proud of the propaganda machine our media has become.
If you don’t want the State Patrol, Department of Licensing, Department of Revenue, Department of Social and Health Services, and so on to read in the news about your complaints about them to your legislators, reading on might do you well…oh, except uninformed clamor has made a mess of the situation. Perhaps this is merely a history lesson to learn from if things go south and you wonder why.
It is apparent from comments on the subject that folks don’t bother to read the bill, they just grab the pitchforks because the media has implied strongly to them that it must be done. To save the folks the arduous task of actually reading 25 pages, here is, in seven pages, is the cliffnotes version.
(To save even more reading, the cliffnotes version of the cliffnotes version is that the legislature was hiding absolutely nothing with the passage of this bill, just protecting the private information of constituents, legislators, and their employees – social security numbers, credit card numbers, home addresses, etc. are nobody’s business – read the list of records made available in Section 103 and the list of protected information in Section 105.)
AN ACT
Amending RCW 42.56 (PUBLIC RECORDS ACT)… (“Each state agency shall separately state and currently publish”) – (“(1) “Agency” includes all state agencies and all local agencies. “State agency” includes every state office, department, division, bureau, board, commission, or other state agency. “Local agency” includes every county, city, town, municipal corporation, quasi-municipal corporation, or special purpose district, or any office, department, division, bureau, board, commission, or agency thereof, or other local public agency.”)
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- Point of contention. Legislature is a branch of government, not an agency. Judge’s ruling says that is true, but each individual legislator is a government agency. That ruling is so far beyond a stretch that even stretching the definition of an agency as far as it goes, you can’t see the ruling from there. Heretofore, as a branch of government, the Legislature has had public disclosure rules. By his ruling, the judge has created 147 public agencies. Each member of the part time legislature would need to staff its office a minimum of 30 hours per week, and produce requested records promptly. That directive would be responsible for 147 full time jobs.
- Point of clarification. Agencies do not have constituents. Therefore there is nothing secret. Legislators have constituents. Your conversation with them should be like talking to your doctor, lawyer, or accountant. Therefore, some things need to be secret. THIS IS AN IMPORTANT CONCEPT
- Point of clarification. Legislators are paid $48k per year for approximately 74% of a full time job. That would be $65k per year full time. Legislative assistants are paid about $44k per year. For comparison, that’s less than the average for restaurant manager, truck driver, or grocery store manager; close to the average for a news reporter. 147 full time legislative assistant jobs would be about $6.5 million. Legislators also make less than restaurant and grocery store managers and less than lots of truck drivers, but after all, they, like teachers, aren’t full time.
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Section 1.
Clarify: Legislature is a branch of government, like the judiciary, not an agency as used in RCW 42.56. Constitution defines access requirements.
Section 101. TITLE
Legislative Public Records Act
Section 102. RECORDS DISCLOSURE OBLIGATIONS OF THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH.
- RCW 42.56 (PUBLIC RECORDS ACT) does not apply to legislative branch (The media wants you to stop reading here…and a lot of folks did, if they even got this far)
- Secretary and chief clerk must make public records available
- Secretary or designee is the public records officer for senate, senators, senate committees; chef clerk is public records officer for house, members of house, house committees; secretary and chief clerk are jointly public records officers for the senate and house collectively and joint committees
Section 103. DEFINITIONS (definitions have supreme importance in interpreting the language, even in the “cliffnotes” version)
- “Chief Clerk” means Chief Clerk of the House
- “Committee” means committee or subcommittee as defined in legislative rule and joint committees as defined by statute or resolution
- “Constituent” means individuals who are not lobbyists, lobbyist’s employers, sponsors of grassroots lobbying, public employees who lobby, elected officials or individuals who act in their behalf
- “Executive rules committee” means executive rules committee of the house or successor committees
- “Facilities and operations committee” means facilities and operations committee of the senate or successor committees defined in rule or procedure to administer polices and procedures and oversight of the senate.
- “Legislative agency” means joint legislative audit and review committee, joint legislative transportation committee, legislative evaluation and accountability committee, office of legislative support services, joint legislative systems committee, statute law committee, office of the code reviser, office of the state actuary, redistricting commission, legislative ethics board, or any other agency created by the legislative branch
- “legislative public records” means, regardless of physical form:
(THIS BILL MAKES ALL OF THESE AVAILABLE)
Correspondence, amendments, reports, and minutes of meetings, made by or submitted to legislative committees or subcommittees
Transcripts, other records of hearings, or supplementary written testimony or data thereof filed with committees or subcommittees in connection with the exercise of legislative or investigatory functions
Records, such as records of payments in lieu of per diem or reimbursement of member expenses
Personnel leave, travel, and payroll records
Records of legislative sessions such as journals, floor amendments and recordings of floor debate
Bills and bill reports
Legislators’ calendar notations of dates, events, and names of individuals or organizations, for meetings or events that are related to official legislative duties and that occur July 1, 2018, and thereafter
Legislators’ correspondence dated July 1, 2018, and thereafter on legislative business to and from persons outside the legislature who are not constituents
Any other record designated a legislative public record by1any official action of the senate or the house of representatives
- “legislative rule” rules adopted jointly or respectively by the houses of the legislature pursuant to Article II, section 9 of the state Constitution
- “Secretary” means secretary of the senate
Section 104. GENERAL DISCLOSURE DUTIES
- Chief clerk and secretary make public records available (see definition in 103)
- Chief clerk and secretary must prominently publish procedures for requesting legislative public records
- Chief clerk and the secretary may establish policies for producing, indexing, and identifying legislative public records
- No authority for chief clerk or secretary to give, sell, or provide access to lists of individuals requested for commercial purposes unless specifically directed by law
Section 105. DISCLOSURE EXEMPTIONS
(THIS IS WHAT IS KEPT PRIVATE AND NOT DISCLOSED)
- Records the disclosure of which would violate a person’s right of privacy including, but not limited to, personal information in files maintained for employees, appointees, or legislators
- A person’s right to privacy is invaded if disclosure of information about the person: (i) Would be highly offensive to a reasonable person and (ii) is not of legitimate concern to the public. The provisions of this chapter dealing with privacy in certain legislative public records do not create any right of privacy beyond those rights that are specified in this chapter as express exemptions from the public’s right to inspect, examine, or copy public records
- Information that would would invade the right of privacy under this subsection, the chief clerk and the secretary may delete identifying details when they make available or publish any legislative public record
- Credit card numbers, debit card numbers, electronic check numbers, card expiration dates, or bank or other financial information including social security numbers, except when disclosure is expressly required by or governed by other law
- Information in personnel records, public employment-related records, volunteer rosters, or included in any mailing list of employees or volunteers of any legislative house or agency: Residential addresses, residential telephone numbers, personal wireless telephone numbers, personal email addresses, social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, identicard numbers, and emergency contact information of employees or volunteers of a legislative house or agency, and the names, dates of birth, residential addresses, residential telephone numbers, personal wireless telephone numbers, personal email addresses, social security numbers, and emergency contact information of dependents of employees or volunteers of a legislative house or agency
- Records assembled, prepared, or maintained to prevent, mitigate, or respond to criminal terrorist acts
- Specific and unique vulnerability assessments or specific and unique response or deployment plans
- Records not subject to public disclosure under federal law that are shared by federal or international agencies, and information prepared from national security briefings provided to state or local government officials related to domestic preparedness for acts of terrorism
- Information regarding the public and private infrastructure and security of computer and telecommunications networks
- Records that are relevant to a controversy to which any entity of state government is a party but which records would not be available to another party under court rules for pretrial discovery
- Records that are subject to the speech or debate clause of Article II, section of the state Constitution including, but not limited to, preliminary drafts, notes, recommendations, and internal legislative and interbranch communication in which opinions are expressed or policies formulated or recommended
Section 106. REQUESTS–INSPECTION AND COPYING
- A legislative public records request must be for identifiable records. A request for all or substantially all records … is not a valid request for identifiable legislative public records under this chapter
- the chief clerk and the secretary shall, upon request for identifiable legislative public records, make them promptly available to any person
- The chief clerk and the secretary shall not distinguish among persons requesting records, and such persons are not required to provide information as to the purpose for the request except to establish whether inspection and copying would violate…statute that exempts or prohibits disclosure of specific information or records to certain persons
- Facilities of the chief clerk and secretary must be made available to any person for the copying of legislative public records except when and to the extent that this would unreasonably disrupt the operations of the chief clerk or secretary
- No official format is required for making a records request
Section 107. RESPONSES
- The chief clerk and the secretary must promptly respond to requests for legislative public records (and on and on with ways and formats to accomplish)
- Additional time required to respond may be based on need to clarify intent, locate and assemble information, notify affected persons, time, resources, personnel constraints
- Secretary or the chief clerk may ask the requester to clarify what information the requester is seeking
- If the requester fails to respond to a request to clarify the request, and the entire request is unclear, the secretary or the chief clerk need not respond to it
- Denials must be in written statement of the specific reasons
- Chief clerk or the secretary may deny a bot request that is one of multiple requests from the requester to the chief clerk or secretary within a twenty-four hour period
- Chief clerk or secretary may deny a request if determined request made to harass or intimidate a legislator or legislative employee, threaten safety, assist criminal activity
Section 108. REVIEW
- Person whose request was denied may seek review
Section 109. PROTECTION—ACCESS—ARCHIVING
- Secretary and chief clerk shall establish reasonable procedures…shall provide for the fullest assistance to inquirers and the most timely possible action on requests for information
- Procedures adopted for access to and preservation of legislative public records must be consistent with the archiving duties of the chief clerk and the secretary under chapter 40.14 RCW (PRESERVATION AND DESTRUCTION OF PUBLIC RECORDS)
- Chief clerk and secretary establish retention schedules for records not covered by RCW 40.14
- Records sent to the state archivist are subject to access laws governing state archives
- If a legislative public records request is made at a time when such record exists but is scheduled for destruction in the near4future, the secretary or the chief clerk shall retain possession of the record, and may not destroy or erase the record until the request is resolved
Section 110. FEES
Impose reasonable fee for photocopies, scanning, storage media used to transmit, etc.
Section 111. DISCLAIMER OF LIABILITY
Legislative branch and its houses, members, employees, and agencies are not liable, and no cause of action exists, for any loss or damage based upon the release of a legislative public record if the entity releasing the record acted in good faith in attempting to comply with the provisions of this chapter (if it gets this far, a judge figures it out)
Section 112. DUTY TO DISCLOSE OR WITHHOLD
Does not affect duty to disclose or withhold under other laws
Section 113. LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEES
Nothing in this chapter gives the executive rules committee oversight authority over any senators, senate employees, or committee of the senate, nor does it give the facilities and operations committee oversight authority over house members, house employees, or any committee of the house of representatives (there are provisions for this elsewhere)
Section 114. CODIFICATION
This act is a new chapter Title 44 in RCW (important for reading the following)
(From here down is basically housekeeping changes of other sections)
Section 115.
Statute law committee and the office of the code reviser are agencies governed by RCW 44
Section 116.
Legislative ethics board is an agency governed by RCW 44
Section 117.
Joint transportation committee is an agency governed by RCW 44
Section 118.
The redistricting commission is an agency governed by RCW 44
Section 119.
The joint legislative audit and review committee is an agency governed by RCW 44
Section 120.
Committee on pension policy and the office of the state actuary are agencies governed by RCW 44
Section 121.
Joint legislative evaluation and accountability program committee is an agency governed by RCW 44
Section 122.
Joint legislative systems administrative committee is an agency governed by RCW 44
Section 123.
Office of legislative support services is an agency governed by RCW 44
PART II
PUBLIC RECORDS ACT—CLARIFIED TO EXCLUDE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH—CONFORMING AMENDMENTS TO CHAPTER 42.56 RCW
Sections 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207 208 amend RCW 42.56… to make perfectly clear that the legislature is governed by RCW 44
PART III
Section 301. SEVERABILITY
If any part is found invalid, the rest remains in effect
Section 302. APPLICATION
Curative, remedial, and retroactive, and applies to all records requests and lawsuits under chapter 42.56 RCW pending as of the effective date of this section.
Section 303.
This act is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety, or support of the state government and its existing public institutions, and takes effect immediately.
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That’s it in a nutshell (granted, it’s like coco de mer, the world’s largest nut, but a nutshell nonetheless).
Next step? Who knows? It might cost us a lot or more than that in tax dollars and personal grief to find out.
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Thos