Welcome to new subscribers and all those kindly tipped off by the Washington Coalition for Open Government. Much appreciated all around.

Now we’re having the State House pull a Saturday work session to try to work down bills sent from Rules Committee. Already HB 2244 - an imperfect bill about Sunshine Committee recommendations - and HB 2661 - a bill with a problematic view at best regarding public records requestors & the educational industrial complex are on the House Floor. The deadline to keep these bills moving is 5 PM, December 17 - Tuesday.

If the Senate gets the bills, the policy committee assigned - almost certainly State Government & Elections - will have to scramble as the cutoff for them is February 25. More dates as per below:

In any event with way more than two bills to worry about… I have my bill tracker up here. With that, the usual table of contents…

Here we go again… we have three activist journalists in Jonathan Choe, Brandi Kruse and Ari Hoffman once again jousting with the Capital Correspondent Association of Washington State (CCA). I covered this issue last year. But this go-around is becoming more about gatekeeping and standards.

Now I decided to pull this topic from my regular Beehiv as that Beehiv was already violating my rule to never go beyond 2026 words. Second, this topic arguably required some contact with real humans to be 100% fair to the good humans involved. With that, here goes…

This time, I’m going to let Brandi Kruse explain one side in a 20-min YouTube:

Kruse clearly wants to push the boundaries here, but at least Kruse is consistent on press freedom. Much appreciated.

I will also add here that I don’t care for Kruse and others personally attacking Shauna Sowersby a Navy veteran, professionally trained journalist and winner of the WashCOG Bunting Award for fighting… legislative privlege. Not exactly a sternographer for power…

With that, granted some of the debate is around if there should be any gatekeeping at all. As Hugh Hewitt wrote in his 2005 book Blog;

Sure we have grown vastly beyond text on a page for blogging. All three of the main antagonists of this story - Choe, Hoffman and Kruse - use video and audio as their primary media mediums of choice. But the point is the same - there is not a lot of gatekeeping left defining who is and who is not media.

Hence the rise of the activist journalist. Now anyone with some work ethic, an agenda/mission statement, and hopefully some integrity can become an activist journalist. Or take their professional journalistic skills - remember I wrote over 700 aviation articles for over 3 years & 3 months - and deposit them in service to in my case open government. Those skills include:

With that, what are the CCA Guidelines?

However, I happen to agree with the CCA guidelines stating that there is a need to "Establish a line between professional journalists and political or policy work" as, "The press should act as an independent observer and monitor of the proceedings, not an involved party." You can see this cited to Ari Hoffman below:

It is very well documented that Brandi Kruse, Ari Hoffman and Joe A. Kunzler - the author of this Beehiv - have been and are continiously testifying on bills and in the case of Brandi Kruse the self-described “political commentator” Brandi has been fully committed to ensure girls sports in this state are for natural girls. A cause I happen to support… There is also the issue that Jonathan Choe is funded in part by a think tank.

When I reached out to Clerk Dean to see if I could apply for a press pass, I got this back:

Clearly Kruse, Hoffman and I have been advocating for bills and/or ballot measures. However, I don’t see the issue Kruse and Hoffman have if you believe Clerk Dean that this is about access to the House Floor vs. press conferences. There is a real, genuine need to limit the access of lobbyists to the House Floor for democratic integrity purposes.

With that, I am a “let the people decide” kind of person. The legal complaint filed by Citizen Action Fund should be required reading on this matter. Frankly, if you agree as I do that we don’t want lobbyists having more access to politicians and want to limit money in politics; then this guideline should strike a chord with you:

After all, Hoffman is technically lobbying. For a clear-cut example, Hoffman said this on his February 6 program,

This may or may not fall under RCW 29B.10.350 that states,

There are more such admissions. Such as Brandi Kruse rightfully taking on defending natural girls from transgender invasions of natural girls’ safety to the point of leading efforts to get an initiative to voters. Also, it was Brandi Kruse whose Newsbrooke-esque muckraking forced a federal investigation into the safety of trans persons vs. natural girls in wrestling. I watched the video and frankly I believe Kruse is doing good investigative work.

So this is a tough one. Democratic Party - and I suspect some Republican Party - politicians want to duck tough questions. Public records requests from the legislature rarely get fulfilled during the session.

I hope regardless of where you stand, that you please:

There you go.

I feel I owe my readers an update. But first if you can make it - and I don’t think I can currently - the annual WashCOG breakfast is March 13 and tickets are on sale.

Here’s the publication schedule - and obviously “special Beehivs” can be done for special events as mentioned below plus “emergency Beehivs” for truly urgent stuff.

When April rolls around, I’m going to be looking into a few factors as to setting a new schedule:

I know I want to hand out the “Underappreciated Awards” to the winning recipients on July 7 in Redmond. Stay tuned for details please.

With that, this Beehiv ends at 1792 words to pay tribute to the first US lobbyist: William Hull, who lobbied for better compensation for US Revolutionary War soldiers.