Mrs. Gregoire has named Seattle City Attorney Tom Carr to chair the new "Sunshine" committee, tasked with reviewing exemptions to the state Public Records Act.

In the world of public records, Carr is perhaps best known for the notorious Hangartner v. City of Seattle case, in which the state Supreme Court sided with Carr and invented two new loopholes not found in statute that enabled governments to conceal public records from the public: permission to reject "overly broad" requests, and unwarranted expansion of the attorney-client privilege.

This appointment suggests that Gregoire is more interested in protecting government agencies from inconvenient citizens than in protecting the citizens' right to know what their government is doing.

UPDATE: Oops. It looks like I erred in understating the objections to Tom Carr. Greg Overstreet writes that this appointment would be like appointing Mike Lowry to head a sexual harrassment committee and says that newspaper lobbyist Bill Will is calling Carr "Darth Vader". Ouch.