This Beehiv is in two parts and an acute personal note. First we deal with the bills that survived house of origin cut-off, the first hurdle. Then we look into efforts to create a task force to address “burdensome” public records requests.
Table of Contents
Acute Overview of Bill Status Post 1st Cut-off
Sample of Bills Which Survived
Let’s start with listing the most significant bills that survived the policy commitee cut-off as one can track here:
HB 2520 - a bill giving additional emergency powers to bodies covered by the Open Public Meetings Act got a last-minute rescue
HB 2444 - an attempt to get Sunshine Committee recommendations passed
HB 2333 - an omnibus bill protecting public servants but especially elected officials from political violence, but this bill is before House Appropriations as the bill has a fiscal note due to serious costs in implementation.
What Got (Likely) Frozen
Happy to report that barring a shocking last-minute effort to unfreeze any of these bad bills these bills are frozen:
HB 1964, "Requires a person requesting disclosure of a list of individuals under the Public Records Act to attest that the request is not for commercial purposes and provide the purpose of the request."
SB 5920, the “HELL NO” bill for open government advocates that would have given school districts substantial relief from public records requests.
SB 5926, Expanding the public records exemption for personal information of family home child care providers to all licensed or certified child care providers after massive fraud was exposed at a national level.
Also some good bills got frozen too…
Two words: Oh well.
What’s Next for the Unfrozen Bills?
Just because a bill survived house of origin policy committee cut-off does not mean that a bill is going to become a law. There is a process so here’s a 4 minute, 37 second TVW video explaining:
Hopefully this helps explain the legislative process to all readers. Here is the calendar of cut-offs ahead:
2026 Washington Legislative Session Deadlines - WA House Democrats
The biggest cut-off is in ten days (10 days) on Feb. 17 - a Tuesday. So for instance, HB 2661 has to get out of the State House and sent to the State Senate. Alternatively, SB 6164 has to get out of the State Senate and over to the State House.
Any bill that survives that cut-off is up against an 8-day timeframe to be heard by the other chamber’s policy committee by February 25 and get passed by March 6. If the other chamber makes changes, it’s a race to get concurrence by March 12.
Author black and white photo of the Washington State Legislative Building
Hopefully that’s clear as black and white now. Please keep checking on my tracker for your bill tracking needs. As Sophe Ellis-Bextor has sung: “Until the Wheels Fall Off”!
With that, I’ve elected to do a deep dive into HB 2661 since that bill is going to have strategic implications for the future of the Public Records Act (PRA)…
A Deep Dive Into House Bill 2661
We start this section with how HB 2661 was spoken to and evolved in Rep. Sharlett Mena’s House State Government & Tribal Affairs Committee. The bill was half of an emergency Beehiv last week in large part because of the increasing volume of concerns from the Washington Coalition for Open Government (WachCOG). Below is what major testifiers said, and then a review of the substitute that passed out of committee.
First the Testimony…
Representative Skylar Rude Introduces the Bill
Representative Skylar Rude (GOP) did get to introduce the bill. In Rep. Rude’s introductory remarks was his intent, “To try to figure out ways that we can alleviate burden for school districts. … Specifically for K 12, I'm concerned about the increasing added costs of administrative burdens, I guess that divert resources away from student instruction.” This was in response to a constitutent who happened to be a public schools superintendent. But Representative Rude also understood that:
“I thought that for something as complicated, potentially controversial, as the Public Records Act, a good first step would be to create a task force, which is what this bill does.”
. . .
“I saw that some signed in con, which surprised me, and I'm, although I can't stay for the whole hearing, I'm looking forward to hearing where those con positions are coming from. I did specifically designate that the task force is happening virtually purely for cost containment reasons.”
Rep. Rude Introducing HB 2661 - Screenshot of TVW Coverage
Government Officials Cry for Relief
Testimony in support of Rep. Rude’s legislation almost universally came from various government officials. One in the case of Tyna Ek, General Counsel for the Washington Schools Risk Management Pool where Ek stated,
We're a public entity ourself, and so we get a number of Public Records Act requests that cost us well over a half a million dollars a year. … We support the PRA but we think bringing that the stakeholders together is the right answer to addressing this problem.
Ek then added that since the requests involve children, special privacy safeguards make responding to these public records requests more expensive. Additionally when invited to share examples of public records response being too much, Ek shared:
You're required to have a designated public record officer. You know that deals with these. But in small school districts, they wear a lot of hats. They can't afford to have one whole employee that does nothing but this. So this school district has had multiple public record officers quit because they just cannot handle the fact that they, for example, they've received over 200 requests from one person, and they, the statute gives no leniency. You have to respond by a certain date. You have, you know, there's all of this requirements.
However, the Association of Washington Cities (AWC) had or let - up to you - their star lobbyist Candice Bock help the educational industrial complex as cities do share well-documented concerns about Public Records Act implementation. As Bock shared with the committee after noting this,
It does seem like a good time to pursue that kind of work again, to bring home together all of the stakeholders the legislature and talk about, how can we improve the Public Records Act?
Then there was Tammy Kimberly, serving as a communications coordinator and public records officer for the West Valley School District in Spokane County. Kimberly shared that,
During 2025 our district received 77 public records [requests]. On average, I spend between 25 and 30 hours a month on them when I came into my role three years ago, that was, on average, maybe five to 10. And it just takes away from other things such as instructional leadership, student supports and district communication, legitimate requests from parents, committee members and journalists should continue to be prioritized at the same time,
We’ll let you decide if this is a frivilous complaint or not. Time for where those con positions are coming from…
“Where those con positions are coming from”
Using a quote from Rep. Rude to be the headline for the opposition to Rep. Rude’s bill. Putting affairs into stark relief was Lunell Haught who shared,
The task force does not address filing systems that would make access easier or training that would help both the public and agencies be more effective. And effective is the key here. We want effective, not necessarily efficiency. We choose democracy not because it's efficient, but because it's effective in making sure that people who should be able to know about the people's business actually can. … We can't close the government to people because we don't approve of the reasons for their wanting access. Public documents belong to the people, and they should have access to them.
Arthur West then rolled in hot with many polemics. But West did make clear that he did not support a task force that… well…
They set out frivolous and harassing requests… as a red herring to set up a committee with the intent of completely eviscerating the Public Records Act. This is because it works and allows citizens to do things. So the proposed constituency of this board is just as suspect as Trump's Board of Peace with the Association of Cities, The Risk Pool and the Association of School Administrators. They come not to modernize the PRA, but to bury it.
This was followed by several WashCOG testifiers. Secretary George Erb rightfully called out that the legislature’s audit agency JLARC didn’t find litigation over the Public Records Act was increasing. Robert McClure added,
Think of the PRA as the fire alarm system in public buildings. Sometimes pranksters pull an alarm, but that doesn't mean we place fire alarms where they are inaccessible.
I Joe tend to agree with Robert here… especially as someone who’s used public records to call out threats to our commons and institutions. Whether it’s Alex Tsimerman’s hatefests or a proposed “nonsecure” juvenile corrections facility in my community or the many records the Public Disclosure Commission creates + should have for starters… we do use public records to protect our communities from harm.
With that, as the host of the Public Records Officer Podcast Jamie Nixon thundered,
A lot of my public records requests are scoped broadly enough to be burdensome for record staff at times, those are the very requests that were critical to uncovering the seven day audit deletion of public records in Washington state. This bill is framed as a response to overly burdensome requests, and I understand that concern, particularly from schools that lack resources to pay for legal review. But the solution to that problem is not less transparency, it's more support, more staffing, better tools and clearer legislative leadership. If reform is needed, there is already a task force charged with handling that reform, and that is the legislature.
Tom Tiersch made clear as an open govenrment advocate that,
The right approach for agencies that say that they're burdened with too many requests and they spend too much resources for processing records requests is for them to comply with the model rules and to put every possible record online and provide a comprehensive, useful search tool so that people can find the information they need quickly they don't have to submit records requests.
But ultimately, WashCOG President Mike Fancher made clear the bottom line of opposition,
Modernizing would focus on improving technology and processes for getting things done instead, the bill seems more about limiting access than improving it. For example, focusing on requests. Requests are not the problem with the PRA. A broken system is the problem. Two years ago, WashCOG published Your Right to Know a special report about the PRA. We found recurring problems, including agencies failing to properly maintain and organize records, open government training that is inadequate and often wrong, and some officials using technology to avoid disclosure rather than enhancing it. We've been listening to agencies and appreciate their concerns. They need help, but that help can't be at the expense of public access to public records.
We’ll let Fanch have the last word. Apologies to those left out, but with a Beehiv nearing a record 2,100 words some matters had to hit the cutting room floor.
Then the Substitute Bill
As a result of all this testimony, a substitute was drawn up with the leadership of Rep. Jim Walsh. The substitute bill that passed committee is now focused on school districts and has Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) taking over leading the group.
A Personal Note
Just wanted to share acutely that I was going to write up my thoughts on activist journalist access to media credentials to cover the Washington State Legislature. But considering this next Beehiv is holding invididuals accountable to a policy, would like to get this right. Also you’ve been reading arguably my longest Beehiv as is.
Thanks for your patience and understanding. Please share this Beehiv blog-newsletter if you appreciate my research. As Hugh Hewitt wrote in Blog…
The advantage of blogging is that it will oblige you to live in the world of ideas and debates, and to do so at the modern pace.
With that, don’t we have a Seahawks game today? In our second home stadium…
Source: Seahawks Official X Account
With that, this Beehive will talk about this YouTube after the Winhawks win later in the week… subscribers will get an e-mail of the “Special Beehiv”.
Let’s just say I consider the above true journalism! Happy to merge my aviation love with the Seahawks with my open government love this special time at 2,212 words.
AIM HIGH and… SEND IT!