Sept. 2 Daily News editorial

Washington’s Sunshine Committee voted 8-1 Monday to recommend that lawmakers do away with their exemption to the state public records law. The vote isn’t binding, but we’ll likely see legislation introduced next year to scrap this exemption. House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, and state Sen. Pam Roach, R-Tacoma, were among the eight committee members favoring repeal of the special exemption.

The prospect of a legislative debate over this issue is encouraging. The provision in the public records act that exempts legislators’ e-mails and many other communications from disclosure would be next to impossible to defend. We suspect that’s a large part of the reason lawmakers have fought so hard to avoid that debate.

The Sunshine Committee, created in 2007 to review the merits of some 300 exemptions to the public records law, quickly turned a critical eye toward the legislative exemption. Lawmakers pushed backed, asking the committee to table a resolution to do away with the exemption until the state Supreme Court could determine whether or not the Washington Constitution provides for legislative privilege. But the state high court declined to take up the issue, leaving the exemption firmly fixed in the committee’s cross hairs.

This past session, there were several legislative attempts to simply shut down the Sunshine Committee. Thankfully, the panel survived the legislative onslaught and refused to back away from this legislative sacred cow. Last March, committee Chairman Tom Carr again put a resolution before the panel recommending the elimination of the legislators’ exemption from the public records law. The resolution was tabled that month because none of the committee’s legislative members were able to attend, then tabled again in May.

Monday’s vote was a welcome outcome to a long and difficult effort to put this proposal in the Legislature’s hands — all the more welcome because two of the three legislative committee members in attendance supported repeal of the exemption. Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, was the lone dissenter on committee.

Doing away with this exemption is only sensible. As Carr’s resolution pointed out, “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.” Indeed, why should the business of state lawmakers receive less public scrutiny than that of local elected officials? The correspondence, e-mails and personal records of city and county officials are subject to the state public records law. So should be the correspondence of state legislators.

It’s difficult to be too optimistic about the chances of seeing this legislative exemption to the public records law eliminated next year. Still, a full airing of the issue could produce some unexpected votes. Lawmakers would be hard-pressed to make a case for this privilege in a public debate. That’s the value of transparency. It can motive reluctant public officials to do the right thing.