Ep. 15 Legislative Secrecy

Ep 15 Legislative Secrecy

[AI VO] (0:00 - 0:31)

Before we start, a quick heads up. Some of the voices you'll hear reading documents in this podcast are AI generated, but the words are real. They come straight from public records, produced by real people inside government.

Further, if you're a public employee who's been asked to bend the rules, or if you've seen something that just doesn't sit right, we want to hear from you, confidentially, off the record. Your identity stays with us. You can reach out to us at contact at thepublicrecordsofficer.com.

[Nixon] (0:32 - 0:58)

What you're about to hear is the actual audio from the 2023 Washington State Legislature's Legislative Preview Press Conference that is held every year the week before legislative session starts. Just the day before this press event took place, state government reporter Shauna Sowersby published an explosive article using records I provided her that showed the records I had requested.

[Joseph O’Sullivan-Reporter] (0:58 - 2:07)

I read a report in McClatchy yesterday about the concept of using legislative privilege to withhold public records. I haven't heard this concept since the whole public records fight came up, so I'd just like to go down the line, and I'd like to hear from each of you sort of the justification for that rationale and whether you support the invocation of that concept. 

[Former House Minority Leader J.T. Wilcox]

Okay, well, you know, the way our system works, I have the opportunity to go through my own emails as well and take a look at what would be compliant with the requirements of the PRA and the specific request, and it can be a little arduous sometimes, but it's never once occurred to me that, oh, there must be some reason I can find that I shouldn't turn this over if it is responsive to the request. And so the idea that things that are difficult can be concealed seems counter to what the whole PRA and very painful, as I might add, the PRA debate was all about a few years ago.

[Senate Minority Leader Jon Braun] (2:08 - 4:20)

And I'll just say that, you know, legislative privilege is a thing. It's been around for a hundred years or more. It should be almost never used. I don't use it at all. We use it very infrequently. I think, you know, I can count it on less than one hand in the Senate Republican caucus, but the, so this is a fine line You know, read the Constitution, we have some right to deliberate, but that is a very, very small group, and we should not abuse or, in my opinion, even use unless it's extraordinarily clear. 

[Former Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig]

I agree with those comments. I think I leave it up to the attorneys to sort of give the legal justification for it.

I will say specifically on redistricting, I decided that we should not use legislative privilege on that issue, particularly because there were such transparency issues related to the redistricting commission that it is really important for, at least for me, in the records that I have control over, that we not use legislative privilege there, and we won't. 

[Speaker of the House Laurie Jinkins]

Yeah, I think that I'm pretty much in agreement with the prior comments, right? The legislative privilege is an exception from public records.

It's actually grounded in the Constitution, not in statute. I think it's been, if you look back at all of the public records requests that have been made over the last number of years, it's used very rarely. It is a privilege that every individual legislator has, so one of the things that's interesting that happens in the circumstances when it's used, and I don't think I've used it at all, is an individual legislator can assert legislative privilege, but another member could be on the same email and they don't assert it, so it still becomes a public record, and that's one of the kind of interesting things about it because it resides with each individual member.

[Nixon] (4:21 - 4:37)

But what you heard at that podium was a bipartisan, civic-sounding, we-totally-get-it rhetoric, right? Legislative privilege exists, it should be rare, it should be careful, it should basically live in a glass case labeled break-only-in-case-of-democracy.

[Nixon] (4:38 - 5:08)

Then the cameras went off, the reporters filed their stories, and the Washington State Legislature went back to its offices and did the exact opposite of what, you know, they just kind of talked about. Today we're going to talk about what that looks like, what the courts have just said on the matter, what it could mean, and why two senators just dropped a constitutional amendment that, no exaggeration, could save your access to knowing how your legislators do the job in your name.

[AI VO] (5:11 - 5:20)

You're listening to the Public Records Officer Podcast, where we fight for your right to know. Now, here's your host, Jamie Nixon.

[Nixon] (5:27 - 5:47)

Hello and welcome. This is the Public Records Officer Podcast. I am your host, Jamie Nixon.

It has been a couple months since our last episode. I had to take some time away from the show. The holidays were here.

I was knee-deep in some legal work, which zapped some capacity, and I also moved back to the wonderful state of Washington.

[Nixon] (5:48 - 7:24)

I couldn't be happier to be back. I love the smell of rain in the morning, and there has been a ton of it since I got here. Real quick on the legal work.

In episode 12, you may remember, I discussed a lawsuit that I had filed against WaTech. The quick bulletin on that is that WaTech was found to have violated the Public Records Act in that suit. I'm not going to get into any further detail on that matter, as we are still, you know, wrapping up the litigation.

There's still some I's to be dotted and T's to be crossed there. But once that is all done, I will definitely do an episode on that story and inform you of how that litigation went. It's kind of an interesting story in and of itself.

But for now, let's jump into the legislative privilege saga and bring you all up to date on this very important issue. Leading the foundation, it's important to know that this story might have more layers than some of these legislative privilege exemption documents I get. Washington's Public Records Act was passed by the people, not the legislature doing us a favor or anything, but by the people.

It was a voter-powered citizen's initiative that passed. And the Public Records Act doesn't just suggest transparency. I mean, the preamble talks like a fed-up parent who just found empty Capri Sun pouches under the couch.

Listen to this. This is part of the preamble of the Public Records Act. I've played it before on the show, but I think it's important and instructive as we go through this story.

[AI VO] (7:24 - 7:46)

The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that 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. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have created.

[Nixon] 7:46 - 8:37)

I've always thought that particular sentence should be heard as a warning label to those who work for the public. The Public Records Act applies broadly. If you are a state or local agency, you don't get to decide what the public should know.

You respond, you search, you produce, or you cite a specific exemption. That's the deal. And that deal isn't just theoretical, it's lived.

When I served on the Fircrest City Council, we passed laws, we adopted budgets, argued about policy, and we did it under the full glare of the Public Records Act. Not because we're saints, but because we're employees. And the public is our boss.

Public records provide the public with access to materials necessary for a performance review of its staff.

[Nixon] (8:39 - 8:54)

Across Washington, hundreds upon hundreds of local legislative bodies operate under the same way. School boards, city councils, county commissions, making decisions that matter, releasing records when asked, and yet somehow society has not collapsed into flames.

[Nixon] (8:55 - 9:10)

Weird, considering the legislature's take on the matter. So why is the Washington State legislature, the people who literally write the rules for everyone else, trying to create a special secrecy rule for themselves?

[Nixon] (9:12 - 10:56)

And to be clear, we're not talking about your social security number being posted online. We are not talking about doxing anybody. We're not talking about security plans for the Capitol, or private medical data, or the kind of stuff that is already protected.

We're talking about records of internal deliberations around the legislation that directly affects you and I. Who said what, when, why, to whom, what staff advised, what was considered, what was killed quietly, what got rewritten, what got traded away, in the final weeks, when everyone else is tired but the lobbyists are still wide awake. If you want to understand how power works, you need the receipts.

Otherwise it becomes a simple matter of just trust us. Just trust us has never flown with the American people when it comes to their government. It's just not a thing that's going to happen.

The legislature's push for its own little secrecy provision is not something new, sadly. In 2019, the Washington Supreme Court held that individual legislators are agencies subject to the Public Records Act disclosure mandate. And the legislature's response was essentially, okay, the people of Washington made it clear they don't want us working in secret.

So how can we work in secret anyway? Screw them. They don't understand how badly we need this secrecy.

How are we supposed to make backroom deals if they know about them? They're not really backroom deals if everybody knows about them. Jesus.

After the court's initial ruling in that case that brought the legislature under the PRA, the legislature decided to try to pass a law to exempt themselves from the PRA. And that gambit definitely didn't end well.

[Nixon] (10:58 - 13:06)

After they passed it with a veto-proof majority, the public outcry came fast and it was intense. Every newspaper in the state ran front page editorials decrying the bill demanding a veto from Governor Inslee. The first time all the papers had ran front page editorials like that since the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese.

In the end, Governor Inslee, due to the amazing public outcry, did veto the bill and the LEG did not even attempt an override vote. They had been beaten. The people had made clear that this type of secrecy was not something they were going to be accepting and they didn't want.

And now the legislature is basically saying, fuck you, we don't care. We must work in secret and you have to cope with it. Now comes legislative privilege.

So they couldn't win going through the regular process of legislating. Not that that bill in 2018, it was Senate Bill 6617, I believe. They proposed it.

One day had like a 40 minute ad hoc weird like committee hearing on it. It wasn't really a hearing. And then they passed the bill like the next day.

Within 48 hours, they ran what they called the transparency bill with no transparency at all, which essentially exempted them from the major most important points of the public records act. I mean, all they wanted to give out essentially was their calendars. You weren't going to get anything else.

In an effort to help their members work in secret, legislative leadership, I believe, particularly spurred on by Speaker Laurie Jinkins, came up with legislative privilege. They didn't talk about it with anybody. They didn't make an announcement to the public that, hey, we're going to start redacting and withholding records based on legislative privilege, something we've never invoked before, something we've never really claimed before.

We're not going to have a vote on it in any committee. We're not going to have a hearing about it. We are not going to discuss this with you, the public, our bosses, because we don't really think that you understand how important it is that we get to talk to the lobbyists without you looking over our shoulder.

[Nixon] (13:07 - 13:39)

This brings us to this institutional choice. And the part where I'm going to be careful and also very blunt is that this isn't about a villain twirling a mustache while whispering, excellent, fewer emails for the peasants. It's about legislative leadership, again, powered by legislative leadership of both parties, making a strategic decision to defend a secrecy concept as a matter of power.

Even when individual leaders stand at a podium and say it should almost never be used, the institution still chooses to litigate for it. It chooses to normalize it. It chooses to fight to make it available.

It's like a loaded weapon you swear you're never going to fire, but you polish it every day, right? It's got to be ready, you know, in case, you know, yeah, I say I'm not going to use it, but maybe one day I'll get to. 

But now we have two published appellate opinions that have poured legal concrete around this choice.

If we go back to the January 5th press conference from 2023, you heard the vibe, right? Reluctant, cautious, rarely used, almost never. 

And that's what leadership sounds like when the cameras are on. Speaker Jenkins, during that press conference, even said she had never used it.

[Speaker of the House Laurie Jinkins] (14:32 - 14:34)

I don't think I've used it at all.

[Nixon] (14:35 - 15:12)

This was wild for me to hear. You see, just one week before she said that, her office sent me 27 pages of records with multiple redactions under this privilege. And here's why that matters in 2026, because this week the Washington court of appeals published an opinion in a case filed by myself and the Washington coalition for open government in an effort to stop this privilege from moving forward.

And I'm going to say this clearly without melodrama, we lost. We lost badly, not because the court hates transparency, not because judges woke up and chose villainy or anything like that.

[Nixon] (15:12 - 15:34)

We lost because the court accepted a constitutional framing in which the separation of powers, according to the court, creates a legislative privilege that operates as a shield against public records act disclosure for internal legislative deliberations. That's the holding. That's the headline there.

That's the legal reality we are now living inside.

[Nixon] (15:36 - 15:38)

Here's the, here's a key line from the opinion. 

[Nixon] (15:38 - 15:42)

It's short enough to fit on the side of a mug, which is great because I need a lot of coffee to get through this.

[Nixon] (15:43 - 16:00)

We hold that the separation of powers doctrine creates a legislative privilege. And then importantly, the court says it doesn't even reach the other big argument, the speech and debate clause argument, which is one of the key arguments the legislature has been making throughout this legal process, because it doesn't have to get there.

[Nixon] (16:02 - 16:12)

Right? So the separation of powers does all the work. They're not even addressing the speech and debate clause.

So in my case, the separation of powers apparently was enough.

[Nixon] (16:14 - 16:17)

And you might be thinking, what does that actually mean in the real world?

[Nixon] (16:17 - 16:37)

Well, if the legislature claims legislative privilege over certain internal deliberative records related to bills, this opinion gives them a roadmap to defend that withholding as constitutionally justified. So you do a records request. They send you a bunch of records.

They're all redacted. And they cite this privilege.

[Nixon] (16:38 - 16:49)

You can take them to court, but the court is going to say, well, what's your defense to the legislature? They're going to say, well, let's get a privilege. You can't, you're a different branch of government.

You can't force us to give up those records.

[Nixon] (16:50 - 16:57)

Even though they're not giving up the records to the court, they'd be giving up the records to the requester who is one of the bosses, right?

[Nixon] (16:58 - 17:08)

We, the people, the bosses, somebody trying to check the work. Currently, as the law stands, they can withhold that. They can redact it.

They don't have to give it to you.

[Nixon] (17:10 - 17:16)

One of the PRA requests asked for unredacted copies of records withheld under the claim of legislative privilege.

[Nixon] (17:16 - 17:20)

The legislature asked individual legislators whether they wanted to keep asserting the privilege.

[Nixon] (17:21 - 17:38)

Some of them waived it. Some of them didn't. So you can end up with the same email chain in multiple versions.

One redacted beyond being helpful. One that is readable, depending on whose records you happen to get and whose records you happen to ask for.

[Nixon] (17:42 - 18:01)

This is partly a result of that 2019 decision that each legislative member office was considered an individual agency under the Public Records Act. So each office or each member gets to make its own decision whether or not they want to claim the privilege. So when you request emails between legislator A and B, right?

[Nixon] (18:02 - 18:08)

Legislator A may decide to claim the privilege resulting in you getting redacted or withheld documents.

[Nixon] (18:10 - 18:16)

Legislator B may decide not to go that route, giving you the unredacted full unvarnished truth.

[Nixon] (18:18 - 18:35)

However, if you only ask for records from legislator A, you will only get the redacted version. You have to ask for the same documents from all the offices involved in the record in order to get a copy from someone who may not claim the privilege.

[Nixon] (18:35 - 18:42)

Hopefully you'll luck out and somebody on that thread that was redacted otherwise. If you go to another office, maybe they were cc'd on it or they were the recipient.

[Nixon] (18:43 - 19:15)

You have to do a different request for that office, in hopes that they will give you an unredacted version or a non-privileged version of the same freaking record. I shit you not, this is how it's supposed to work. I mean, that's not transparency.

That's just like a game of whack-a-mole, right? It's like the government is saying, you know, the government is open. You just need to make sure you collect the full set of lawmakers, you know, like a set of baseball cards or Pokemon cards, whatever.

[Nixon] (19:15 - 19:16)

You got to complete the set.

[Nixon] (19:16 - 20:09)

If you don't ask for everybody's record, so, you know, and what's really wild about this is that a lot of the people who are pushing back against the Public Records Act as onerous or too difficult, get upset when there's these larger, broader requests. What the legislature is basically forcing requesters to do is make the request of every single damn office in the building. That's what they're incentivizing.

They're incentivizing massive workloads for their public records officers to handle by doing this because people are going to figure out, okay, well, I guess I just have to ask for everybody's record about this particular topic, hoping that one of those offices will give me the unredacted version. Real champions of transparency, this legislature is. It's like saying, congratulations, citizen, you found the unredacted version because Representative Transparency over here, they clicked wave, but Senator Secrecy over here did not.

[Nixon] (20:10 - 20:58)

So one copy of the exact same document can look like a ransom note that a child with a Sharpie got access to, while the other copy looks like a regular email. It treats this legislative privilege as individual, right? So again, one legislator's waiver does not waive anyone else's.

So your access to information becomes a function of who is on the email, who asserts the privilege, who waives, who doesn't, and which records office responds correctly on that particular day. And we've had some people who have taken a pledge that they're not going to claim the privilege and that's great, but that's certainly a good step. However, that pledge is only as good as their comfort with releasing their records, right?

The moment a record is requested that they absolutely do not want the public to see, they can go back on their pledge in a moment.

[Nixon] (20:58 - 21:25)

I mean, it's just not that, it's something, but it's not truly satisfying. It doesn't have the force of law behind it, the force of true compulsion. Now, a couple of weeks back on February 24th, I believe, another published Division II Appeals Court decision came down in Arthur West's case against the privilege.

[Nixon] (21:27 - 22:17)

West asked for unredacted copies of records withheld under legislative privilege as well. Some lawmakers waived, some didn't, you know, same movie, different theater, right? And in that opinion, the court concluded that both the speech and debate clause and the separation of powers doctrine provide the privilege from disclosure of legislative deliberations under the PRA.

Arthur's case, two of the judges agreed that the speech and debate clause granted the privilege. All three of the judges agreed that the separation of powers doctrine granted the privilege. In my case, the judges found just the separation of powers clause granted the privilege.

They didn't necessarily rule on speech and debate clause. They almost left it open. So we have a clear line on separation of powers.

Both cases were settled on long separation of powers lines with this extra stuff with West's case being about the speech and debate clause.

[Nixon] (22:19 - 22:30)

That means that two published Court of Appeals decisions out of Division II now recognize a legislative privilege that can defeat Public Records Act disclosure for internal legislative deliberations about bills. 

[Nixon] (22:33 - 22:45)

Now, I'm not going to attack the court over this, even though I disagree with their decision. The court's job is to interpret. You know, it's not their fault that we are here. 

[Nixon] (22:47 - 23:01)

Sometimes we hate their decisions. Sometimes we love them. But the point is, this is now a democratic problem, small d democratic problem. 

This is not a judicial, this is not a judicial personality problem of any kind. 

[Nixon] (23:02 - 23:06)

If the Constitution is being read to allow secrecy, then the solution is to change the Constitution. 

[Nixon] (23:07 - 23:12)

And that is something we can in fact do. And that takes us to our heroes. 

[Nixon] (23:21 - 23:40)

Whenever you're getting gaslit by your own state government on matters like this, it can sometimes be helpful and instructive to look at what other states have done. The court does this, they did this in this case, they looked at other states, you know, basically like, wait, are we the problem or are they the problem? 

[Nixon] (23:40 - 24:01)

Like, you know, this can't be the first time this kind of thing has come up, right? Well, Connecticut, of all places, just handed Washington a master class in framing this institutional problem, I think. In October 2025, the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission issued a final decision in a case about legislative records and speech debate. 

[Nixon] (24:03 - 24:18)

The respondents argued that legislative privilege derived from the state constitution acts as a categorical bar, basically. If it's connected to legitimate legislative activity, the public can't get it. The respondents in this case are saying, we have a privilege. 

[Nixon] (24:19 - 25:22)

The commission responded, first calling that categorical claim untenable. Second, it made the clean doctrinal point that Washington is now refusing to make, that legislative privilege serves an entirely different function with virtually no overlap with producing public records. This is devastating. 

It's not ideological, it's functional. Speech or debate exists so legislatures can't be bullied, arrested, sued, or prosecuted for doing legislative work. It's about independence and immunity. 

A public records request is not that. A request is just, hi, what did you do with the power that we loaned you? And Connecticut isn't pretending that this is some impossible balance. 

It reflects what a grown-up public records system can and should do. It applies statutory exemptions for drafts and notes where appropriate. It applies attorney-client privilege where appropriate. 

It orders disclosure of what isn't exempt.

[Nixon] (25:23 - 25:31)

In fact, the decision points out that existing freedom of information exemptions already addressed many of the concerns that the respondents in this case raised.

[Nixon] (25:35 - 26:06)

Connecticut found a way to protect real deliberation without creating a needless, widely unpopular, and wholly unjustified constitutional secrecy umbrella. Now, this Connecticut commission decision is probably not the end of the story. Cases like this get appealed, argued, fought over, but as a framework, the way they framed the issue is just perfect. 

In Washington, the framework is essentially privilege is a constitutional shield, against public records disclosure. In Connecticut, the framework now is privilege is about immunity. 

[Nixon] (26:07 - 26:42)

Freedom of information is about records. Stop trying to fuse them. Along with this Connecticut case finding is a recently published Stanford Law Review note describing a bit of a different battlefield, but dealing directly with legislative privilege and its problems, especially in regards to federal discovery and 14th Amendment enforcement. 

But again, the theme is identical. When legislative privilege becomes near absolute, it blocks proof of motive. And constitutional accountability becomes a magician's trick, where the rabbit is rigorously hidden down in the bottom of the hat, and it can't be found. 

[Nixon] (26:45 - 27:05)

In the piece, the authors make the case that it is not possible to enforce certain Voting Rights Act provisions without being able to ascertain the intent of those drawing district lines. Having access to those records is critical. If you are arguing that a district was drawn purposely to harm or benefit certain classes of voters over others. 

[Nixon] (27:05 - 27:20)

These state-based absolute privilege exemptions put due process rights at risk. When litigants can't access the evidence they need to prove their case, because state courts are giving legislators an undemocratic power that people do not want their legislators to have.

[Nixon] (27:28 - 27:35)

Here's where we zoom out, and I'm going to label this clearly as what it is. This is the legal horror movie possibility here. 

[Nixon] (27:36 - 27:56)

Not the certain future, not a guaranteed outcome, but I have a lot of concern that we're going to see this coming up. If separation of powers is the engine that drives legislative secrecy, the core logic becomes courts can't compel legislators to disclose internal deliberations, because that's judicial interference with legislative function. 

[Nixon] (27:58 - 28:57)

Okay. Then what exactly is the limiting principle? Because the Public Records Act doesn't just govern the legislature. 

So it governs agencies all over the state and its purpose is explicit. The people do not yield sovereignty. Public servants don't get to decide what's good for the people to know. 

Now imagine the next lawyer, and there will certainly be a next lawyer, standing in a county council fight or city hall fight and saying, your honor, you can't tell this legislative body to hand over records either, because deliberation is deliberation. And courts don't get to interfere with legislative work. Is that argument guaranteed to win? 

No, it's not. Does the Washington constitutional separation of powers doctrine map neatly onto local governments? Not exactly. 

No, it doesn't. But that's the thing about bad incentives and convenient doctrines. They spread. 

[Nixon] (28:59 - 29:28)

If the state legislature succeeds in normalizing the idea that we get a special deliberation shield enforced by constitutional structure, every other government actor with something to hide is going to try to borrow that language. Guaranteed. And that's before you even get to the practical real world impact of it, right? 

If you can't see internal deliberations, you can't see the moment a bill was gutted. You can't see who pressured whom. You can't see what lobbyists drafted language got copy pasted into the final. 

[Nixon] (29:30 - 30:19)

You can't see how we listen to the community becomes we listen to the five people with a corporate badge. To be clear, you don't need to believe legislators are evil to understand bad incentivization. I'm a communicator. 

I've worked in politically adjacent environments for two decades. And I can tell you the moment you remove oversight, the temptation to do business in the dark becomes very seductive. And that's why I keep hammering this point.

This is not about gotcha. This is about audits, right? Your government is the largest, most expensive machine you will ever co-own. 

And you are being told you don't get to see the service records. And the absurdity, it just jumps off of the page. 

[Nixon] (30:20 - 30:38)

However, there is good news, right? There is good news here. There is an elegant fix. 

And it's not just trust me. It's not, you know, let's wait for the courts. It's not even like crossing our fingers and hoping, you know, your leadership does the right thing in private. 

Because I know a lot of people have that attitude.

[Nixon] (30:38 - 30:51)

Well, as long as it's my party in power, I don't care if they withhold documents, which is total horseshit. That's where you are. You have real problems with what democracy actually is and how democracy should actually work.

You should really check that vision of it, if that's how you see it.

[Nixon] (30:51 - 31:20)

The good news is, is that there is a fix for this. And that fix is nothing more than good old fashioned democracy. In the 2026 session, the one that's wrapping up the week that I'm putting this episode together, Senator Jesse Solomon introduced Senate Joint Resolution 8211, which was co-sponsored by Senator Adrian Cortez.

[Nixon] (31:21 - 31:46)

This is a proposed constitutional amendment, which means it's not a press release. It's not a bill that dies quietly in committee while everyone pretends they're very concerned. It's a ballot pass, essentially.

It says in black and white that the next general election, the Secretary of State shall submit voters an amendment to Washington's speech or debate clause. And here's the key language. This is the part where you can practically hear the sunlight hitting the page.

[Nixon] (31:47 - 31:52)

Written documents concerning the internal deliberations shall be open to public inspection and copying.

[Nixon] (31:53 - 32:19)

Man, that's great. And then it does what adults do. It preserves what speech or debate always was supposed to protect.

Legislators still aren't liable for words spoken in debate, and they aren't liable for the contents of those written documents either. Translation is you get deliberation without secrecy, you get independence without insulation, and you get immunity without invisibility.

[Nixon] (32:20 - 32:38)

Again, that's the bargain. Now, here's the political reality. As a constitutional amendment, it would require two thirds vote in both chambers.

Then the bill would have to get sent to the voters, and you have to win a majority of the vote there. And with session ending this week, obviously this isn't going to happen this year, which is unfortunate.

[Nixon] (32:40 - 33:02)

But this is an election year, and constitutional amendments are how you take an institutional power grab and put it back in the hands of the only people who actually own the state, the voters. So now that such a measure has been proposed, we can push those running for election to the ledge this year to speak to this. We must make legislative secrecy a voting issue.

[Nixon] (33:03 - 33:33)

We have to tell these people that if you are not going to get right with this and you are not going to support an amendment that ends legislative privilege, you are not going to get my vote. This doesn't mean you have to vote for the other guy who isn't going to support it either. You can withhold your vote from anybody who doesn't go with the basic principle that transparency is a fundamental pillar of democracy and that those who don't support that should not be loaned the kind of power we loan legislators.

[Nixon] (33:35 - 33:42)

Yeah, I'm calling Solomon and Cortez heroes on this. Not because they're perfect, not because I agree with them on every issue, obviously. Nobody agrees with everybody on every issue.

[Nixon] (33:43 - 34:40)

But because in this one area, open government, they are doing the thing most elected officials avoid. They're open to letting the voters decide how much power slash secrecy they should get to operate with. This should absolutely be an issue that the voters should get to weigh in on.

And it should be instructive to voters that this has not been discussed with them at all, right? I mean, anyone see Speaker Jenkins running around the state trying to make the case for your legislator to work in secret? Weird, right?

They're so convinced that this is the right thing, that this thing exists and that they should have it, they need to have it. But they all know that the voters hate this idea. They don't want to put this up for a vote from you and me.

They know they're going to get wiped out. This is at least a 60-40 issue at minimum. Funny how they all talk up the virtues of transparency until someone requests records from their office, right?

[Nixon] (34:41 - 34:55)

It's important to note here that Solomon's proposed amendment, as written, would not address all of the court's reasoning for the privilege, right? It doesn't address the separation of powers problem. It will need to be reworked to do so.

[Nixon] (34:56 - 35:01)

But at least Solomon and Cortez are on the record in a way that no other legislators in Olympia are.

[Nixon] (35:03 - 35:15)

And I bet they will be open to making the necessary adjustments to their measure to end this democracy gutting secrecy push. I think I'm going to reach out to Senator Solomon's office and see if he'd be willing to come on the show and share his thoughts on the matter.

[Nixon] (35:23 - 35:32)

So what do we do? What can you do? What's the thing that you can do, that I can do, that's going to help push the ball forward here?

Because I mean, getting wiped out in the court.

[Nixon] (35:33 - 35:40)

So I think there are kind of three options. You know, obviously, follow the litigation, keep an eye on it. Know what's going on with the court.

[Nixon] (35:42 - 35:49)

You should definitely support the Senate Joint Resolution 8211 or whatever is going to come in its wake.

[Nixon] (35:49 - 36:04)

You should definitely challenge your legislators to support that or to propose their own. Any legislature can propose something like this. Has your legislator proposed it?

Has your legislator signed on to somebody else's proposal?

[Nixon] (36:06 - 36:29)

If not, if they waffle when you talk to them about it, then you've learned something about them, haven't you? You learned where they are on the issue. You learned that if the situation is right, they're probably going to hide records from you.

And we want them to say this stuff in public. You should go to town hall meetings. Town hall meetings are going to start happening here after session.

A lot of the legislators will come back to district, they'll do a town hall session or two.

[Nixon] (36:30 - 36:54)

You can go down there, you can ask them questions and get some answers, get it live, get it public, put them on the record as to whether or not they think they should be able to keep your records of their work from you. Because let's not forget, these aren't their records. These are our records.

And they are the way that we get to decide whether or not that person is doing the job we expect of them.

[Nixon] (36:57 - 37:19)

Another thing you do besides following the litigation and supporting a constitutional amendment to change this matter, just file public records requests anyway with the legislature or any place else. File records requests at the agencies you interact with, file them in your city, your county, your school district, ask for communications, ask for drafts, ask for logs, just ask for the receipts.

[Nixon] (37:20 - 37:41)

Because even if legislative privilege is now a shield the legislature can raise, most of your government does not get that shield yet. And sunlight still works, mostly. And here's the thing about filing public records requests, you don't have to be a journalist to do it.

You don't have to be a lawyer to do it. You don't even have to be liked.

[Nixon] (37:43 - 37:55)

You just got to be persistent. Be kind and understanding to those who you interact with when requesting records as they are often under resourced and working without the best available tools, but you should persist nonetheless.

[AI VO] (37:58 - 39:40)

That's it for this episode of the Public Records Officer podcast. A quick note before you go, some of the voices you heard on the show weren't from real people. Some were totally synthetic, AI generated to read from public records and legal depositions that are yep, public.

You'll also hear real human voices like live audio from state meetings and the occasional passionate rant from the show's gorgeous host. Every episode has a full transcript at thepublicrecordsofficer.com. It breaks down which clips came from humans and which came from our robot friends.

Think of it like liner notes for digital democracy. You'll also find links to the original documents and recordings we talked about, hosted on Google Drive, free and public. So if you want to fact check us, go nuts.

That's kind of the point. If this show got you fired up or even just mildly interested, check out the Washington Coalition for Open Government. They're a nonprofit that fights for transparency and they've got resources if you want to help or just learn more.

And hey, if you work for the state and you've seen one too many messages accidentally disappear, we'd love to hear from you confidentially, unless you want to be famous. The Public Records Officer podcast is a creation of Nixon and Daughter Productions, powered by good coffee, better whiskey, a microphone, a legal tab, and the apparent misguided belief that government should actually be accountable to people, which is adorable, really. Thanks for listening.

See you next time. And remember, you're not paranoid. They really did delete it.