The difference between telling voters something and telling petitioners something else. RCW 29A.72.027 does the latter. It permits the government to append its own language to the official presentation of a citizen initiative only after the citizens who wrote and circulated that initiative have finished the one constitutional act the statute cannot reach — their signatures. The State calls this “disclosure.”

Washington tax revenues are available for lawmakers to prioritize when writing the budget using their constitutional appropriation authority. Unless constitutionally defined, no law or ballot measure can bind what a future legislature does with its appropriation power.

Although local propositions such as levies already provide this kind of fiscal impact information, statewide ballot measures do not. In fact, state law doesn’t allow fiscal impact disclosures to be appended to statewide initiative and referendum ballot titles. HB 1876 solves this problem, thereby ensuring that in the future, voters are advised before they pick up a pen to fill in a Yes, No, Approved, or Rejected oval that the measure they’re voting on would affect the state’s finances.

This measure would decrease funding for public K-12 education, higher education (including universities and community colleges), and human services (primarily healthcare).

This measure would increase funding for the 2026-2027 state general fund, which primary investments are medical assistance-programs, public instruction, and higher education.

“You can’t cut money that doesn’t exist. The Attorney General’s PIID is not just misleading; it’s factually incorrect.”

Critics of the Public Records Act almost always begin with the burdensome requester. They begin with an inmate, the so-called frequent flyer, activists, lawyers, journalists-it's the person filing too many requests, asking for too many records, making government employees nervous, and apparently preventing police officers from walking the streets of our communities. They almost never begin with the governor who failed to modernize the system. They do not begin with the agency executive who bought 1000s of Microsoft licenses, handed out mobile devices, encouraged employees to conduct public business through instant messages, and then failed to build a lawful system for preserving and retrieving those messages. They don't seem to ever begin with the attorney general who warned agencies that Microsoft's communications tools were not compliant with Washington records law out of the box, then spent years defending the automatic destruction of records those tools generated. They don't ever seem to begin with legislative leaders who have responded to the digital age by claiming broader privileges, classifying more communications as transitory and making it harder for the public to see how their laws are written. They begin with the requester, with us, we the people.

“Records I obtained also showed that the AGO directed employees to use Cisco Jabber, a communication system where messages could disappear when a computer was shut down or restarted. … Employees were instructed to clean out a local message folder weekly and not retain Jabber records for more than 30 days. Other records showed AGO employees using Jabber for discussions about briefs, pleadings, deadlines, and case matters.”

Apparently, government can purchase the software, generate the information, act on the information, and store mountains of it. The unreasonable part begins when someone asks to see it. Government invested more aggressively in creating information than in managing and disclosing it. They forgot about the other side of the whole thing. That was and is a choice, not an inevitability. When the accountability system became overloaded, leadership could have expanded capacity. Instead, it tried to turn down the accountability by blaming requesters.

Who investigates the death of someone in government custody or proves that senior officials knew about misconduct and did nothing? That answer frequently begins with the records, body camera footage, public record, use of force reports, public records, disciplinary investigations, public records. Records employees are not decorative administrative overhead, sitting between the public and real public safety. They preserve the evidence through which public safety agencies are held to account. A records office is the evidence room for civil government. Two more officers and no meaningful ability to inspect what they do is not greater public safety.

Law enforcement officers carry extraordinary authority. They can stop, search, and arrest us. They use force against us, testify against us. Their actions determine whether we lose our jobs, licenses, freedoms, sometimes our lives. The records are not a diversion from law enforcement; they protect the legit use of those powers by law enforcement. When police agencies control both the exercise of power and the survival of the evidence documenting that power, transparency is not some luxury. It is the legitimacy lending democratic check on that power.

A right that is dependent on the government's opinion of the person exercising it is not much of a right. … Public records laws are not based on symmetry between the citizen and the state. The relationship is intentionally unequal because the power is unequal. Government works for the public, not the other way around. The Public Records Act is not a punishment imposed on public employees, it is the condition attached to exercising public power.