By Denis Law and Stacy Goodman

Transparency—and the critical importance of making public records readily available to the people we serve—is in our DNA. Prior to serving as mayor of Renton and president of the Issaquah City Council, we spent many years as a newspaper publisher and a reporter/editor, respectively.

We fundamentally believe in open government, and in the Public Records Act (PRA) that ensures governmental agencies dedicate resources to allow the people to track elected officials and hold them accountable.

But while most people use the PRA responsibly, a growing number of requestors are manipulating the PRA and using it for reasons other than transparency. Requesting all records from time immemorial from 43 public agencies throughout King County (as a former Seattle Police Department employee did) simply isn’t about transparency. Such requests, along with those for purely commercial purposes, both strain public budgets and delay responses for legitimate requests.

So just as we have acted to ensure transparency to the public, so too must we act when some requestors use the PRA as financial motivation, for punitive purposes or overly broad requests, or for retribution. Manipulating the PRA for these purposes is harmful to public agencies, and ultimately to taxpayers.

Cities need to devote taxpayer dollars for public safety, streets, parks and other vital services, rather than being forced to spend these dollars on frivolous, abusive public record requests.

Instead, cities increasingly are forced to devote more and more limited resources to respond to voluminous requests. In the past 10 years, formal records requests to the City of Issaquah grew 1,000 percent, requiring triple the response resources. Clearly, something about the current PRA is not right.

The Legislature is currently considering Substitute House Bill 2576 (SHB 2576), a modest proposal sponsored by Rep. Joan McBride (D-Kirkland) and Rep. Terry Nealey (R-Dayton). The bill provides some alternatives for local governments and requestors alike. The bill allows agencies to adopt policies to limit the time and resources spent responding to records requests in order to better manage the impacts of large, complex requests. It also establishes a Public Records Commission as a cost-effective, streamlined, non-court alternative to help resolve public records disputes.

While open-government advocates have expressed some opposition to this bill, they also acknowledge the problem with certain types of requests and requestors. Some say SHB 2576 is headed in the right direction. Now we need to work together to keep this bill moving forward in order to address real, underlying problems.

The Public Records Act is now 44 years old, and for the most part it has served us well. But when a growing number of people seek to monopolize the Act for personal gain, and ask to see every shred of paper or e-mail that’s ever existed, we need to take action to modernize it.

We request common-sense solutions so that we can put our taxpayer dollars where they belong—into services for our families, our children, and the betterment of our communities.

Denis Law is the mayor of Renton and Stacy Goodman is president of the Issaquah City Council.