Northwest now is supported in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

if I may begin, the links between cigaret smoking and cancer and heart disease are well-established.

Are they?

I don't I don't know that they are.

Well, Mr.

Therm, scientific research has shown that to be the case.

No one hasn't.

Well, with respect, I'm afraid that it has.

That's your opinion.

And I can show you equal numbers of studies that prove that smoking can be beneficial for you.

You can.

Yes.

Well, could you name them?

Why should I name them?

Why don't you name?

Remember Martin Short's portrayal of Mr.

Therm, the tobacco industry's dissembling PR spokesman?

even Mr.

Therm couldn't spin away our legislature's continued efforts to defeat Washington's Public Records Act.

Tonight, our annual look at the declining health of government transparency with the Washington Coalition for Open Government, and a look back at 14 years of Northwest Now's open government programs in recognition of Sunshine Week, the annual celebration of government transparency, your right to public records and open public meetings.

Next on northwest now, You.

it's the Friday before Sunshine Week, the annual celebration of government transparency.

Sunshine week is celebrated every year at the Washington Coalition for Open Government's annual Sunshine Breakfast.

As a member of the Washington Coalition for Open Government.

I was honored to make that event this morning and also accept the organization's Anderson Award.

On behalf of myself, Northwest Now and Ktrk Public Television.

For the 14 years we've done this program, which despite the very serious and somewhat dry topic, we've tried to have a little fun with.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Ever feel like the government isn't really acting well?

Transparently.

You're not alone.

why does the average person care whether or not we can go down and take a look at a government record?

Well, in our form of government, the people are actually in charge.

So we need to be very vigilant in trying to protect the public records and open meetings laws.

I am not on a map.

I am a free man.

Ha ha ha ha!

Most dystopian stories involve the power of information.

Those who wield the power and those who lack the access to the secret files.

and without disclosure, without transparency.

The truth is, for all the talk, we cannot know whether a tax break is actually delivering value.

a public record is a public record, regardless of what device it's on, whether it's owned by the city or the state or the county or owned personally.

If it's a public record concerning public business, it's public.

So You've received a Cat scan of the legislature's soul.

What does it reveal?

Well, I think it reveals, the extent to which the legislature really values public input in the legislative process.

About zero.

That is.

Yes.

Yeah.

You want answers?

I think I'm entitled.

You want answers?

I want the truth.

You can't handle the truth.

Jack Nicholson said that famous line in A Few Good Men.

But in the Washington state legislature, some lawmakers seem to be thinking it.

We get it right, right out of the gate by keeping the records, organizing the records, and making them available.

I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it and stick your head out and yell.

I was mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore.

Well, the media and open government advocates have been shouting about public records for years.

But as my little granddaughter would say, it's not working.

Washington Yeah, it's been a lot of television, and I want to thank the many guests who took the time to participate in all the open government programs we've done over the years, both here in the studio and when we traveled to them all across the state.

Joining us now are watchdog president and former Seattle Times editor Mike Fancher, Wash Cogs executive director Colette Weeks, and Wash Cog communications specialist and public records advocate Jamie Nixon.

Mike, I want to start with you just this year, as I track this from year to year, my tickler file on open records, problems, issues, lawsuits, failures to to comply and Open public meetings act, failures along the same line.

I'm not kidding you.

If I were to print it out, it'd be that thick.

There are so many cases and so many issues with this, I guess I want to ask you kind of the big philosophical question and that is, is it fair to say that the PRA and the OPM are pretty much under attack, under siege right now like never before?

I think it's absolutely okay to say that.

I think that's what it feels like to us.

I would add to this notion of how much there is we're running on fumes.

I mean, this has been a really rough year.

There's so much going on.

And, we're still standing and we've had some victories, but, but it's tougher and tougher every, every year.

There's just no question of that.

And two years ago, we put out a report specifically on the Public Records Act and concluded that the public's right to know was eroding.

And a year ago, we updated that.

And we said the erosion is now looking like an entire assault.

And as I was thinking about this for this show, my attitude is right now we have them.

We have a mindset problem among public servants back when the when the, open government, public records, public meetings, acts were passed, there was a preamble that said the people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them.

The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know, and what is not good for them to know.

That attitude is pretty much gone in in state government and local governments.

That's the concern that I have.

Somehow.

And we believe the people do care and they still want this, but the public servants aren't providing it.

And, it's an uphill battle.

I would almost say that.

I think you make a great point in the way I would put it is it seems to me that the burden of proof has actually flip flopped.

It used to be, I think the mindset was and the values were of the people who passed the original act in 1972 was, listen, it's an open record, unless for some extenuating circumstances, we prove otherwise.

Right?

I think it's just the opposite now, which is.

No, this baby is locked down.

These are government records.

They're not for your discussion.

Now, there may be a case or two where we have to release them for a very good reason.

It seems to me the whole thing has done this.

And the attitude is that it's too much trouble.

It's too costly.

It's a it's a, it's a burden rather than being a basic public service like a utility.

And frankly, you need to go back to the, to, to square one on that.

There was a bill introduced in the legislature this year.

We were asked to if we would participate in the in in a task force that would modernize the Public Records Act.

We said, sure.

Then we saw the bill and the language in the bill wasn't modernizing in the way that we would think of technologies or processes.

It was basically making it harder for people to get the records.

And, fortunately, I don't think that Bill is going to end up going anywhere.

But, it's it's that sense that even a process that's supposed to be a positive turns out to be a threat.

We'd love to have a task force that looks at, how to modernize the PRA.

We'd like to participate in that, but we want to actually have it improve access, right?

No, not just I'm sure the legislature would be happy to lock you into a room and lose the key.

So that's just like the Sunshine Committee, the committee created in 2017, 2018, to look at which of these, exemptions under the law can we get rid of.

And all this time, essentially, they've done nothing with the recommendations from the from the committee that they created, which now number either close to or more than 700, which is amazing to be totally ten.

Yeah.

Right.

Colette.

Tell people why this matters and how in your role now as the executive director of Cog, you see the top priorities strategically when it comes to things like membership and communication and trying to enlist some allies in the legislature.

Why is it important?

And kind of what's what's your thinking on strategy here in light of what Mike talks about the the siege that that this is under?

Well, it's important because our entire structure of government is about the people, they're supposed to be working for us, and they have to be reminded regularly.

But now it almost seems as if they're fighting back.

And, you know, talking about attitude, I'd say it's even a culture change.

It's it's dramatic and I don't think that the people feel that way.

And, I'm afraid people might start letting people know how they feel in the midterms, but that's remains to be seen.

But what we need going forward, what we would like to see happen, is that we can stop playing defense because we have been under attack and we have been fighting back just trying to tread water, just keep up.

But where we need to go and what I see us doing in the very near future is becoming, more of an offense player.

Yeah, we need change.

We want modernization.

There are a lot of things that we want.

And but to do that, we need to grow.

You know, with the Washington Coalition for Open Government, we need to grow.

We want more people, under the tent.

We want ordinary Washingtonians that, you know, to just stand together and remind everybody who holds office and everybody who works for government that there are people, too, but they just work for us.

Yeah, yeah.

A big piece of that strategy is communications.

Jamie, I typically kind of put this down toward the end where, hey, tell us your website how to get involved.

Not not this time.

That's going right to the top with your role.

And, the things that you do, I would like you to hit this early and talk about all the channels that you're communicating on.

I follow most of them, and where folks can, can find, the public records officer podcast, the newsletter social lay that out for me, how people can interface with wash cog, which you've been doing a lot of work with.

Yeah.

So, the public Records Officer podcast is something I started, in July.

I have a website that's very easy to find is just the public records officer, podcast.com.

You can find us on, Twitter or.

Excuse me, ex blue sky.

Instagram.

You can find the podcast on most places where people get podcast.

So Apple, Google Play, Amazon, wherever you get your podcasts you will be able to find it quite easily.

And on there we try to tell the actual stories.

You know, I'm somebody who does requests.

I care greatly about the issue when I find, interesting.

Sometimes dumbfounding stories that come from this, I think it's important to tell people what they are.

And I focus pretty much, a lot of my work on how these requests are being processed, how the how the individuals who process them are doing this.

So I'm not necessarily doing a request at DFW involving, a hunting regulation of some kind.

And then there's a story there.

I have done requests on how are you handling the auto deletions of teams chats.

Yes.

And so I'm looking for exactly how they're doing that because I think, you know, a lot of we can gain a lot of information as to how they're doing it, which will help guide us as to what changes we might need in the future to make sure we're maximizing, the Democratic potential of the Public Records Act.

Where's the report on auto deletions, by the way, since I've got you, where's the report on that?

There isn't one, in a sense that, there was no, public communication made that this was going to happen.

There was a decision made, in summer of 2021 by the agencies that are served by tech that, essentially teams chats creates too much data for us to go through and to search effectively and to exempt appropriately.

So we're just going to label the entire channel transitory.

We're going to try to train everybody to only put transitory messaging in there.

And what what they mean by transitory is stuff that isn't necessarily returnable.

So we have a records retention law that mandates the retention of records based on content and function.

What happened here was that they basically said, well, we're we're only going to anything you put in, they're going to label is transitory.

We're not going to check it in every seven days.

It's just going to be destroyed.

There was no report there.

Nobody told anybody this.

It took a little bit for Seana Sauers the reporter from what Seattle Times now an AI to get over our ontological shock that this much the records could be being destroyed this quickly without review without audit without any public knowledge or understanding.

We're talking years of people doing litigation or public records requests where they weren't getting probably weren't getting records.

They should have other well, my big concern and ongoing and unlimited potential liability for the taxpayer to make it right.

That's correct.

Yes.

I just got an appeals decision from the appeals court that affirmed that individual citizens have no way to stop this.

The way the rule.

There's two different laws here.

There's the Public Records Act, and then there's the records Retention Act.

The only way to enforce the Records Retention Act is through a criminal situation where if you, purposely violate or destroy record enforcement retention, you could be tried for a felony for that charge.

Otherwise you can't, the court won't.

You can't find standing with which to challenge what we think is a different kind of destruction, which is a systemic decision, as opposed to one person getting a little scared that a record going out might harm their reputation.

And so they destroy it, which is not okay either.

Right?

But that's not the same thing.

Is the entire system deciding Chicago going in and and the potential for abuse here to me seems so obvious that, well, if you're going to do something unethical or illegal in government, do it on this platform here because it's just negotiate.

Well, yeah, you could do it that way.

But if you're going to do electronic communications, if you do it here, high likelihood no one's ever going to find out you did it.

Yeah, yeah.

Mike, the big the 800 pound gorilla in the room has been and remains a legislative privilege.

And and for these questions, everybody can jump in on this.

What is the status of that?

Our friend Jamie, you're you're a litigant in this Arthur West, who's going to be joining us here on Sunshine Month on Northwest now is going to be joining us.

What is the status of legislative privilege?

It seems like it's heading into reality.

Give me the latest and your take on it.

Well, I would I would agree.

It seems like it's on a path to, to be found to be a protection that the legislature has or we call it, we call it legislative secrecy rather than legislative privilege.

The legislature has claimed it under the state constitution, and individual legislators have a personal privilege to withhold documents that otherwise would be public under the Public Records Act.

We sued over that, lost at the trial court level.

Our case is on appeal.

You're going to be talking to Arthur West later.

And his case just had a ruling.

I'll leave it to you guys to duck talk about that.

It didn't go well.

It did not go.

It did not go well, and it's again, if if the courts are going to say this is not a court matter, this is the legislature's domain.

Then it just gets back to the, to the mindset of the individual legislators.

And when they run for office, what their commitment to openness is.

The, the our colleague on the board and the state legislator, Jerry, Paulette this year won an award from the weekly newspaper publishers.

Their freedom's Light.

Light Award.

And Jerry was telling me the story about how his father was a politician in New York and was so committed to openness.

And so that's the spirit that Jerry brings to this.

But if but if that's not what motivates you, if if it doesn't, you know, beat in your heart that you're there to serve the public and instead you've got all this work that's so important, you don't want the public to mess it up.

And that seems to be a lot of what's going on there.

So it's still an open issue.

Where it goes from here, we'll have to wait and see.

But sooner or later the state is going to have the public is going to have to make a statement to their elected officials that we demand openness, accountability.

And and that's the thing that builds trust in the government processes, climate speak.

I worry about efforts to modernize.

I also use that modernize the initiative process.

Now, it doesn't appear that bill's going to happen this year.

But Colette, talk a little bit about do you think at some point you're going to be leading the charge, for a statewide initiative to, I guess, reiterate the, in my view, plain language in the original act and also, I would ask you this question about when when it comes to the politics of this thing, too, when it comes to to lawmakers, I keep thinking that lawmakers are going to pay a price for kind of ignoring this state's libertarian streak.

If you're not from here, you're not quite hip to the fact that we're a little libertarian.

It hasn't worked out that way.

So as you try to play offense a little bit in the legislature, how do you view some of those issues?

Well, the first thing I can tell you is that when it comes to the legislature, we've asked for a couple of years now if they would pledge and we couldn't get a dozen, you a dozen of well, of 100.

And a lot of the times what we hear is that they're waiting for the court decision.

So we want to find out what they can get away with before they make the promise.

So, you know, if our hopes are that the legislature is going to do the right thing and pass, a stronger law on the people's behalf, I think that we're waiting in vain.

And I hope that the initiative process doesn't get weaker, because I don't know what that will mean for the state of Washington.

Yeah.

If I could jump in here.

Sure.

On this.

Unless they're really sick.

I think it's important things for people to understand about this decision, especially, looking, you know, the brief glimpse I got of the decision, Arthur's appeal today.

All three of the judges were agreed on the separation of powers argument.

And this should concern everybody at every level.

If the legislature is claiming the court can come in and compel them to hand over records, why does anybody think the court is going to be able to compel the city, city Council of Seattle to do the same?

These are the legislative bodies.

If the court is going to say that there's a separation, the court can't compel this.

We're talking about the evisceration of PRA allowing the people to say to Washington to check the work of their employees at every level of legislating, school boards, fire districts, city councils, county commissions, whatever it is, this is a really serious thing.

This isn't just a legislative decision, I don't think I think this is going to be a system wide decision.

There are over 1800 legislative bodies in the state, and all of them are going to ask for this exemption.

Wow.

Yeah.

Well, that's that's that's a little bracing, but I, I am definitely on board with the interpretation of that.

Well, tell them the truth of it is that, that, local agencies, cities, counties, bureaus, are hurting.

They need help.

They regard the, public records Act as an unfunded mandate.

They're told you have to do this, and they're not given any support to do that.

And the biggest problems are they're not using the technology to help them organize records, since they're not organized well when they're requested, they can't find them and they can't deliver them.

And then when they're challenged and end up having to pay penalties, which doesn't happen very often, but but can then it then they're basically saying, we can't afford this.

And so therefore there can't be openness.

Yeah.

They need help.

We'd like to help with that.

We'd like to see training better, training for public officials.

We'd like to have better training for the public, including civics education.

So people understand what their rights are and some funding for that and some funding for that.

So at all optimistic, then about the new appointment of the chief, Transparency Council and Nick Brown's continued discussion about the importance of transparency and open government, it seems to me, I guess you could take a cynical view of that.

You know, here's the fox watching the hen house.

Or you could take an optimistic view and say, well, at least they're acknowledging it.

And it's a value of the state and they've got somebody in place to do it.

Help me interpret it.

But yes, I was just going to say Nick Brown's just been there for a year now.

And he has worked in an administration that was at least more open than the one we've got now.

There's hope.

I would say that, you know, are we giving them a pass on anything.

No.

We're still watching the idea that they have an open government division now and they've put Morgan in charge of it.

Great hopes, great hopes.

Okay, but but we're watching.

We're not, you know.

Jamie.

Yeah, I would say that, you know, the there's a fundamental issue at the, you know, in the foundational level here where the AG is operating in a place where there's a conflict of interest.

Yes.

And it's a glaring conflict in these situations when, you know, when there was a, you know, Bob Ferguson was ag he was defending and helping, craft the defense for auto deletions.

Once Nick Brown comes into office, they continue that same defense.

So to me, I'm seeing, you know, new boss, same as the old boss a little bit.

But at the same time, we do expect the AG to represent the agencies to protect the taxpayers interests there.

But the problem is, I think sometimes the AG forgets who their first client is.

Yeah.

And so the edges in the space where they can identify an agency that probably has violated the Public Records Act, the AG is, also empowered by statute to make a decision on settlements.

AG does not have to go through all the court process to defend these things.

You can say, look, agency B, you screwed up here.

We're going to settle this case out.

And so there can be a less vociferous defense when obvious wrongs have been done.

And I think I would like to see that kind of direction come out of the AG's office where they say, look, we're going to take a look at this case a little bit more closely.

And if the agency's a failed, you're going to be on the hook for it now.

And I but I do also think that the legislature should address this conflict.

I've got a story that I did on Can You train is that conflict though baked into the cake when they go to train?

Taxing districts and local agencies.

Is the goal correct?

Are they teaching disclosure and the PRA or are they teaching?

Here's how to here's how to make sure you don't get hooked up in it.

So teaching legal risk versus, disclosure.

Disclosure.

Yeah.

You know, managing legal risk.

Yeah.

I think you're absolutely right that that's definitely.

And, you know, and it's not irrational for them to act in that in that way to some degree.

But it's also one of the reasons why we don't personalize the penalties of the PRA.

Right.

You know, because, yes, mistakes can be made.

I don't want to necessarily hold any, you know, if you're destroying records, that's one thing.

Yeah.

But if you if you honestly did a thing here where, you know, you didn't get it right or, you know, I just a human error happened.

No, I don't think individuals should be held to account, but we don't hold individuals to account in that way.

We hold the agencies to account for their failures.

And so I just it would be nice to see the AG refocus the agency until the legislature can find a way to to fix this, the legislature should step in here because there's just no place for it.

I have one of the stories I tell my podcast is about a public records officer, one of the agencies who tried to report destruction of records, with the AG and it appears that there was no investigation into that.

I asked a pro later.

Hey, are you guys trained on where to go if you see this kind of behavior, they're not.

This person said that she did a whistleblower complaint with the state auditor's office that was a blower complaint, wasn't acted on.

And so she doesn't know where to go.

Where is it?

Where is the public records officer supposed to go when the AG is working for the management of the agency?

Because that's who the client, their first client.

But but the client.

But this person is trying to help uphold the law, and they're being ignored and now isolated as a result of that.

So the AG, I think, really needs to think hard and clear about about how they can best apply the law.

And the legislature needs to step in and try to clarify some of this in some way so that, the idea that reflexively to saying, well, we'll defend whatever they did, well, what if they did something that harms the people, right?

And not delivering records so that we can hold our government to account is a harm to the people.

You know, Mike, want to talk to you about the exemptions to the PRA.

Now numbering, I think close to or at 700 or above.

How how is how did we get from.

I think you said the originally there was a ten, ten, ten, ten exemptions to 700.

I mean, it really it's almost Orwellian that we have a public records act.

Oh, except for the 700 exemptions.

Yeah.

It's really something George Orwell could have written.

Yeah, it is, and I think that what happens is people go to the legislature with good intentions to speak to a problem.

The problem then is not well defined and the solution is broad.

This has been the history of what's been happening.

And so, Good intentions, unintended bad consequences.

Often the good intention includes trying to protect some segment of society, for specific re specific reasons.

But then you close off, insight to how the government is operating and then you find out later that, in fact, the system is abusing the very people that it was intended to, to, to protect.

I think it's getting more naked than that.

There was a bill in the legislature this year that pretty much exempts all the vital data, just carte blanche, to some degree to, counteract the problem of vexatious requesters, people who are not, requesting in a, in a genuine and, and a real fashion for actual information.

And Morgan even says that, told me that that's a it's a small percentage of the requests are vexatious in his mind.

Yet here they come with that lever to basically gut the pra.

I don't I don't know what history, what kind of a future that Bill has.

As we sit here and discuss this today, but certainly on the table.

Well, it's the notion of abusive, requests.

Well, who defines that?

Yeah.

In the spirit of the law initially was the government doesn't get to ask who you are or why you what you want these records or what you're going to do with them.

The spirit was there, public records.

You're entitled to have them, as we like to say that that, public records don't belong to the government.

They belong to the public.

Yeah, but but but you're right.

That's how that gets.

That's how it gets foreclosed and collect.

Do you want to mention that?

Because you're.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So for one thing, the word vexatious can be defined so many ways.

But but one thing the bill that you're talking about mentioned was that it would be kind of like a nuisance, you know, frivolous.

Right.

These are words that that are interpreted widely depending on where you're sitting.

So somebody who is working in an office and they're being asked for a whole lot of documents, well, they might be very annoyed by the fact that they're having to do that.

But does that make it frivolous?

No.

So the other problem is, is that this whole theme has become almost like propaganda, because it's been bantered about across all of the state and amongst every agency that we've spoken with, it just becomes this topic.

And then you ask what data, what numbers?

We're not getting any.

We don't hear it.

How much is this costing?

We're not talking about it in numbers.

You watch anything that it any time it comes up, it's just that there's this problem.

It's a problem.

Undefined.

Yeah.

We don't want to deal with it.

It's a problem, but it's a problem.

And I would say, you know, I think a lot of the small, you know, we talked about this a little bit, but the legislature needs to resource this like the law enforcement that it is.

They you know, you go talking about if, you know, cops on the street, law enforcement is is waning and isn't doing, you know, isn't getting the job done.

People will demand the funding and the resources for it.

This is another form of law enforcement.

The Public Records Act as a law enforcement act.

Yeah.

And it enforces, you know, an accountability on our elected officials and the people in power, the idea that, you know, and legislative privilege that there's a group of people who have been told very clearly by the people they do, that we do not want you to work in secret or not finding a court path to try to do that so they don't have to do it in a bill which in 2018, we all remember what happened when the entire state said, no, you're not going to exempt yourself from the Public Records Act.

They haven't crowed when they've won their cases.

They don't show up for the pleadings.

They don't want to talk about it.

People you know, in any line of work you're in, somebody has a supervisory role over you who gets to check your work.

This is the legislature saying, we don't want you to be able to check our work, right.

Just trust us.

Americans don't like to just trust their government.

We never have.

And, I just think that in the, you know, the resourcing at the at the local level, especially, we were getting to talking about this earlier, that's a thing that really needs to happen.

I agree that some of these, requests are probably tough on these agencies, but digitization, retention, organization, they need those kinds of resources and they need so they need updated computer systems, updated software systems.

There's options on you know, maybe this system works better for our particular thing.

You know, I've heard talk about a singular place where anybody in any state for any agency wants to get a request.

They would go through one portal.

Maybe that's an idea that would save them money.

It could be borne by the state and all the requests to come through that portal.

It can all be examined by all the stakeholders in it.

We go to keep an eye on it.

There's there are solutions here.

And the big thing save time because right now one of the big dodges on PRA fulfillment is the ticking of the clock.

And you know, if there's a hot topic now, it won't be six months from now.

Mike.

And you know that as a newspaperman, here, your record six months late.

As those of you will recall from six months ago, this was a big story.

Well, people understand that the news media has a has an immediate need for the information that it's seeking.

The public does, too.

In many instances, people have problems that they're trying to solve and questions that they need to have answers for.

So the public urgency is quite similar to the media urgency.

Yeah.

Anything I have left out before we wrap up with some final thought, I like having been, you know, sort of a downer to to kick this off of being exhausted and, you know, all the problems that we have.

I do want to say we feel very good about where the coalition is.

2000 we just finished our annual report in 2005, actually had a lot of good things about us, starting with Colette becoming our new executive director and doing a great job.

Our government committee, led by Robert McClure and our, our, lobbyist, Anna Christiansen, is has had the most work it's ever had to do.

And I think the biggest impact our communications committee led by by George Erb, our board member, and Jim Simon, is doing strategic communication in a way we never had before.

And we're doing more social media than we ever had before with real impact.

Yeah.

And we're going to get better at that.

But, I think we feel like we're we're we're doing great.

We do need the public to support us.

There's just no question of that.

I was going to say in our last as we close here, how can people get involved naked self-promotion.

I would say folks need to read the read your, your right to know report that is produced so well.

How can people get involved?

Well, they can first of all, sign up for our newsletter or just for our emails.

We send out a newsletter quarterly.

But we also like, for instance, we send out an Olympia watch every Monday during the session.

And, that sometimes comes with an action alert that says, hey, call your legislator.

We even include a link where you can find who your legislator is by putting in your address and it allows people to take action and take part.

And that's what we really want.

We want them to take part.

Read our annual report.

See what we did last year.

Yeah.

You know, we put stories online, we have information there, and we still have a helpline.

I mean, we're not there to solve necessarily individual problems, but we definitely can help let you know what's in the law.

Yep.

And, you'll probably get me on the phone and then I'll find people who know stuff, but, but there are a lot of opportunities to take part, and those opportunities are going to increase as we grow and expand.

And I think reading the stories of key award winners and how a lot of them are kind of accidental activists sometimes some of them are, you know, establishment people who do a great thing are reporters, sure.

But there are a lot of average folks, too, who have proven that they can use the power of the state's transparency laws to affect real change.

There are, and we should say that we are, nonpartisan, independent.

And we're not we're not part of the government.

And in this in this day and age, with so much hyper partizanship, being nonpartisan is something the public really values, and we work hard at it because we're our board is made up of people who have very strong opinions of all kinds of political issues.

That stays out of the room.

All we care about in the room is open government, great conversation.

I appreciate all of you coming to northwest.

Now, as I, you know, say, every year for the past 14 years, you guys have been instrumental and I think doing a great deal of public education here on this program.

Well, and you have to yeah.

We appreciate you.

Yeah.

Thank you for the time.

Yeah.

Thank you.

A quick note another good source for open government news is Joe Counselor's blog on Beehive at Advocates corner.beehive.com.

Everybody supports open government on paper, but not so much in practice.

The bottom line I'm guessing the voters of Washington are eventually going to have to go back to the initiative process to rein in the purveyors of secrecy, despite the fact the Public Disclosure Act of 1972 remains crystal clear.

My thanks to the Washington Coalition for Open Government, for the Andersen Award and their participation across all these many years.

I hope this program, as always, got you thinking and talking.

You can find this program on the web at kttc, talk streaming through the PBS app, or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

That's going to do it for this edition of northwest.

Now, until next time, I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.

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