Editor’s observe: That is excerpted from Washington Lawyer Common Nick Brown’s speech to the Washington Coalition for Open Authorities’s March 14 Sunshine Breakfast in Bellevue.
My philosophy is that open authorities is a bedrock for all public service.
It’s how we construct belief locally. It’s how we all know how we are able to greatest serve the general public. In case you are being clear, open (ness) is how the general public holds us accountable and we transfer our work ahead.
This isn’t a brand new dedication for me. I’ve been a believer in open authorities and transparency for a lot of, a few years.
After I grew to become the governor’s counsel in 2013, we ensured that he grew to become the primary governor in historical past to by no means exert the chief privilege, a dedication that he made as a candidate.
As a result of it had by no means been finished earlier than, there have been many individuals in that workplace who have been apprehensive about our potential to operate at a excessive stage. But it surely wasn’t that tough. It wasn’t that tough to take care of that pledge and performance at a excessive stage.
And a few of the considerations that I hear now, from not solely the Legislature however different state representatives and native authorities representatives, is a concern of transparency that’s not born out in actuality generally.
I believe we confirmed within the governor’s workplace which you can operate at a excessive stage and never use issues like the chief privilege, and I’m actually hoping that we get extra legislators who’ve made that dedication to not exert the legislative privilege going ahead as a result of that concern will not be warranted. We are able to function with out utilizing these privileges to withhold a few of these information from the general public.
Despite the fact that I’ve solely been on this workplace for a pair months now, I’ve already seen a few of the nice work that’s taking place within the AG’s workplace to enhance transparency and prepare different native governments on following the Public Data Act. And we’re engaged now in some new rule making, on the request of parents on this room, to verify we proceed to enhance the Public Data Act transferring ahead.
However I do know that we have now extra work to do to enhance the work that’s taking place within the AGs workplace.
We’ve obtained some very important packages, together with our native authorities session program. It helps communities all throughout the state, of all measurement, enhance their practices. And final yr, we supplied trainings to over 7,000 public servants throughout the state. We have now skilled a whole bunch of recent public information officers in order that they know what’s required of them beneath our state’s Public Data Act.
We’re additionally working at a second in time the place these points really feel rather more critical and acute than they ever have earlier than, and I believe {that a} authorities’s dedication to transparency displays the duty that they really feel to the general public. It reveals how a lot we consider in our potential to enhance individuals’s lives, and certainly, how a lot we consider on this experiment known as democracy, as a result of transparency makes it very exhausting to control actuality.
And on this second, it actually feels essential for me to speak about what we’re seeing from the president of the US and his new administration.
Open authorities and free speech and the media are all beneath assault proper now from the best ranges of authority. And I don’t say this frivolously.
I hope you’ll be able to inform from my profession, I’ve been dedicated to public service and this nation because the starting of my skilled profession. However I really feel nervous about our future, as a result of what we’re seeing from the best ranges of energy on this nation, and I do know the individuals right here on this room perceive a few of these challenges and a few of these threats and the disaster that I believe we’re in. However I’m frankly shocked that extra individuals on this nation aren’t speaking about these points with the urgency and the seriousness that it deserves.
The president talks about being a free speech president however he’s actually limiting entry to trusted and impartial media and changing them with clearly compromised reporters, shops that he personally favors. The president and his administration have deleted complete databases of taxpayer funded info on well being, on local weather, on civil rights and different topics that … could by no means now see the sunshine of day.
For my part, he fairly clearly has no regard for the Structure and a few of our legal guidelines and our precedents. He despises criticism and tries to silence it at each potential alternative. I don’t actually know the way we are able to attain every other conclusion based mostly on the phrases and the actions of the president and his administration, as a result of we’re seeing it in so many alternative methods.
And on this second, on this cyclone of exercise, and having gone by way of my very own service within the Military, to the Division of Justice, to the governor’s workplace, to the legal professional basic’s workplace, I preserve occupied with two separate ideas, two separate concepts.
First, I preserve questioning what it could be like if President Trump used all of his unimaginable abilities and skills and acumen — and I do consider he has unimaginable abilities and skills and acumen — what if he used these as a pressure for good? What if he led with hope as an alternative of concern? What if he led with charity as an alternative of self aggrandizement? What if he led with honesty and transparency as an alternative of fixed, unrelenting lies? What if he led with love relatively than hate?
Not solely would we not have this tradition of concern and hatred that America is now residing by way of, or the disaster of character that we at the moment are dealing with throughout the board, however I preserve occupied with all the nice that he could possibly be doing to truly enhance individuals’s lives. As a result of the president’s character issues, as a result of the facility of that workplace has a means of normalizing traits, whether or not they’re good, unhealthy or ugly, and it’s very, very regarding for me to see the normalization of mendacity, of dishonest and of secrecy and silencing of opponents.
However the different thought I preserve occupied with is that Washington state has an incredible alternative to guide on this second and enhance individuals’s lives. If we should … we are going to preserve going as (an) company again to court docket to defend individuals’s lives, to face up for the rule of regulation and defend the Structure.
We’ll proceed to innovate on this state and construct alternatives for individuals in each nook of this nice state. We are able to present that transparency and entry are a device for public good and shouldn’t be a partisan political battle. It’s about our proper in our democracy to learn in regards to the actuality of the issues that we’re dealing with, and we are able to handle these issues head-on.
