Editor’s notice: That is excerpted from Washington Legal professional Normal 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 will finest serve the general public. If you’re 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.
Once I turned the governor’s counsel in 2013, we ensured that he turned the primary governor in historical past to by no means exert the manager privilege, a dedication that he made as a candidate.
As a result of it had by no means been completed earlier than, there have been many individuals in that workplace who have been apprehensive about our skill to operate at a excessive stage. Nevertheless it wasn’t that arduous. It wasn’t that arduous to take care of that pledge and performance at a excessive stage.
And a number of the issues that I hear now, from not solely the Legislature however different state representatives and native authorities representatives, is a concern of transparency that isn’t born out in actuality typically.
I believe we confirmed within the governor’s workplace you could operate at a excessive stage and never use issues like the manager privilege, and I’m definitely 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 isn’t warranted. We are able to function with out utilizing these privileges to withhold a few of these data from the general public.
Though I’ve solely been on this workplace for a pair months now, I’ve already seen a number 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 oldsters on this room, to verify we proceed to enhance the Public Data Act transferring ahead.
However I do know that we’ve got extra work to do to enhance the work that’s taking place within the AGs workplace.
We’ve acquired some very important applications, together with our native authorities session program. It helps communities all throughout the state, of all dimension, enhance their practices. And final 12 months, we supplied trainings to over 7,000 public servants throughout the state. We have now skilled lots of of recent public data 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 way more severe and acute than they ever have earlier than, and I believe {that a} authorities’s dedication to transparency displays the accountability that they really feel to the general public. It exhibits how a lot we consider in our skill to enhance folks’s lives, and certainly, how a lot we consider on this experiment referred to as democracy, as a result of transparency makes it very laborious to control actuality.
And on this second, it actually feels vital 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 very best ranges of authority. And I don’t say this evenly.
I hope you possibly can 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 very best ranges of energy on this nation, and I do know the folks 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 surprised that extra folks 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 unbiased 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.
In my opinion, 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 attainable alternative. I don’t actually know the way we will attain every other conclusion primarily based 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 common’s workplace, I preserve fascinated with two separate ideas, two separate concepts.
First, I preserve questioning what it will be like if President Trump used all of his unbelievable abilities and abilities and acumen — and I do consider he has unbelievable abilities and abilities and acumen — what if he used these as a pressure for good? What if he led with hope as a substitute of concern? What if he led with charity as a substitute of self aggrandizement? What if he led with honesty and transparency as a substitute of fixed, unrelenting lies? What if he led with love reasonably than hate?
Not solely would we not have this tradition of concern and hatred that America is now dwelling by way of, or the disaster of character that we are actually dealing with throughout the board, however I preserve fascinated with all the great that he may very well be doing to really enhance folks’s lives. As a result of the president’s character issues, as a result of the facility of that workplace has a manner of normalizing traits, whether or not they’re good, dangerous 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 fascinated with is that Washington state has an incredible alternative to guide on this second and enhance folks’s lives. If we should … we are going to preserve going as (an) company again to court docket to defend folks’s lives, to face up for the rule of legislation and defend the Structure.
We are going to proceed to innovate on this state and construct alternatives for folks in each nook of this nice state. We are able to present that transparency and entry are a software for public good and shouldn’t be a partisan political battle. It’s about our proper in our democracy to be told concerning the actuality of the issues that we’re dealing with, and we will handle these issues head-on.
