The Washington State Supreme Court has taken another whack at the Public Disclosure Act today, with its mixed ruling in the case of Yousoufian v. Ron Sims. The court found that a lower court was incorrect for arbitrarily reducng the number of days used in calculating the fine owed Yousoufian. But the court also ruled, clearly against the intent of the law, that the fine owed by a violating agency need not be increased as a function of the number of records withheld from the public. In other words, the court believes that a government agency may withhold an arbitrarily large number of documents without facing any consequences that are serious enough to discourage such abuse.
This is just the latest assault on the public's right to access government records, from Governor Locke and from the Supreme Court itself. Attorney General/governor wannabe Christine Gregoire habitually argues for executive secrecy and against the public's right to know. (In the Yousoufian case she filed an amicus brief on behalf of Ron Sims).
For our democracy to function properly, we require access to our government's records; and enforcing this right requires an independent judiciary to defend the public's right-to-know against the executive's aspiration for secrecy.
In order to defend our rights, it is essential to elect the following Supreme Court candidates who support public disclosure: Justice Richard Sanders and Jim Johnson. Johnson's opponent, Mary Kay Becker, has a poor record defending public disclosure as an appeals court judge. She should not be elevated to the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Gerry Alexander and Justice Susan Owens, who joined today's majority, are two of the court's staunchest defenders of executive secrecy and should be voted off the bench when they're up for re-election in 2006.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at September 30, 2004 04:45 PM | Email ThisI hope to have time to read more about the specifics of the cases, but I'd like to point something out about Gregoire. As the AG, she's the lawyer who acts on behalf of state government, and makes those arguments that favor the state. That's her job. Just like it was her job to argue the state position favoring the old primary system, and as it would have been her job to argue in favor of the state's DOMA laws had they come up in court during her term of office.
Posted by: natasha on October 1, 2004 02:00 PMI wish you had done your homework a little more thoroughly.
1) The Attorney General was not a defendant in the Yousoufian case but filed a brief anyway supporting King County's arguments. King County was found to have acted with gross negligence at trial long before the AG filed their brief.
2) There are rare occasions when the AG does not defend state agencies on public disclosure matters. There is no duty for the AG to defend an agency that it believes is violating the law. But usually the AG defends non-disclosure by agencies, and it has a poor track record. The AG loses these cases because the burden of proof is on the agency and often the denial of public records by agencies is based on political agendas and not legitimate statutory exemptions.
3) The state public disclosure act is much different than the Federal FOIA which Bush has asserted. It is better in many ways for the public to access records.
4) Gregoire didn't initially argue in favor of the State's blanket primary. When the US Supreme Court found the California blanket primary unconstitutional, the Washington Democratic Party then sued to invalidate the Washington blanket primary. The same day that the WA Democratic Party sued, Gregoire drafted an order for a federal judge to sign which would invalidate WA's blanket primary and enjoin the state from conducting any primary without providing the major parties with a list of registered voters by party choice. The WA Republican party and the WA Democratic party agreed with Gregoire's proposed order and the judge signed it. This was in 2000. Then the Grange appealed Gregoire's order invalidating WA's blanket primary and won at District Court. At this point, Gregoire chose to defend the WA blanket primary before the 9th Circuit, and lost.
Zoom forward to modern history where the WA State Legislature passed a new primary called the "cajun" primary (a modified but legal top two system.) Locke vetoed it leaving us with the backup "montana" primary (a partisan primary but without providing the major parties with lists of registered voters by party choice.)
Again, the Grange sued to invalidate Locke's veto and named the Secretary of State as a co-defendant because the Sec of State is supposed to implement the "cajun" top two primary. Gregoire chooses to defend Locke but not Sam Reed. Reed hires outside counsel to defend the new top-two primary passed by the Legislature, but loses.
Regrettably, most voters will never grasp this convoluted history, and so Gregoire can get away with saying she supported the Washington's primary systems, when history clearly indicates otherwise.
On a different point, it is my opinion that it is not so easy to catagorize open government as a partisan issue that Democrats are better at. Institutional politicians, regardless of party affiliation, are mostly opposed to disclosure. I am a Republican who vociferously fights for open government. I know few Democrats that are better at winning lawsuits to compel public disclosure. I could probably count them on one hand. It is my conjecture that Democrats just don't sue Democratic politicians for failing to disclose public records. The reverse would probably be true if Washington were a Republican state.
Posted by: Tim Ford on October 1, 2004 03:08 PMThough frankly, I don't know what the big deal is about the primary. In California and most other states, you have to register by party right when you sign up to vote. The courts have found several times that blanket primaries illegally deprive political parties of the right to choose their representative candidates. And why we'd want to copy Louisiana's messed up political system, I can't imagine. If the grange wins their case and sticks us with a top two, the parties will go to picking their candidates via caucus, and even fewer people will get a chance to participate.
On a different point, it is my opinion that it is not so easy to catagorize open government as a partisan issue that Democrats are better at. Institutional politicians, regardless of party affiliation, are mostly opposed to disclosure. I am a Republican who vociferously fights for open government.
To some extent I agree with you, and I don't think that it is a purely partisan issue. But people do tend to have more vigor in going after documents that might make the other side look bad. However the Bush administration in particular, not necessarily all Republicans, is extremely secretive. If this is an issue that concerns you, you must certainly be aware of it.
Posted by: natasha on October 2, 2004 09:52 PMThen the sponsor of the ad substantiated the claims and the ad continued to run in both the original version and a modified version for the full length of the contract with Comcast. The claims were backed up by deposition testimony of Paul Berendt (WA Democratic party chair) and by legal documents personally signed by Gregoire. But if you look at the Gregoire press release, you only get half the story.
She eventually did defend the primary but only after she was politically embarrassed by the Grange who overturned the order she drafted and co-signed with the party bosses (on the same day that they sued to invalidate to primary.)
It may be easy for Gregoire to spin the issue considering the procedural history is not something people will remember.
It is a politically charged issue. So whether Gregoire agreed with party bosses to end the primary, and then later reversed herself after the Grange beat her in court, is an important question to voters.
If Gregoire has a problem with the ads, instead of trying to silence them, she should be airing ads of her own.
I came from NJ where you also had to register with a party. Back then I was a registered Democrat. I liked the blanket primary better and will vote for the top two primary system. I think the WA party bosses miscalculated the overall support of open primaries by the voter. I know that Chris Vance (WA Republican party chair) will lose his job, in part because of the lawsuit to invalidate the primary. Good riddance.
I also doubt that the parties will go the caucus route. They obviously could have done that decades ago when the blanket primary was passed as an initiative by the Grange. But they didn't. I could give you my thoughts on that, but it would be another long email.
I do think Bush should be more open and release public records. So why haven't the Democrats gone after him on the issue? It would seem a more appealing issue than Iraq. Kerry has never polled better than Bush on Iraq.
The average joe would need an expert to help the average joe understand their implications.
I don;t think the media would provide an accurate representation of this information. Rather it would be biased in order to sell media =\
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Posted by: Peter on February 1, 2005 07:08 PM