Lunell Haught and George Erb: State redistricting commission violating letter, spirit of Open Public Meetings Act

By Lunell Haught and George Erb

Every 10 years the Washington State Redistricting Commission takes on a task that goes to the heart of our representative form of government: It draws the district boundaries that determine who represents us in the state Legislature and Congress.

Washington voters expect the Redistricting Commission to do its work on time and in the open. This year, the panel did not quite do either.

The commission missed its deadline for adopting and sending a redistricting plan to the state Legislature by midnight Nov. 15. Its final meeting was conducted mostly out of sight, with commissioners voting on unseen documents.

The panel’s 11th-hour machinations left Washington voters in the dark and damaged the credibility of the state’s established process for drawing representative districts based on the latest census.

The four commissioners responsible for Washington state’s redistricting had a difficult job. Their work was based on the census, a contentious and complicated process resulting in late data, and an unproven mapping process.

Commissioners also had to deal with technological challenges, criticism and even multiple definitions of “fair” over how voters are grouped, boundaries drawn and terms of office set. Perhaps, as The Spokesman-Review’s Jim Camden noted, the Nov. 15 deadline was too early.

Commission Chair Sarah Augustine brought the online meeting of Nov. 15 to order and called roll. All four voting commissioners were present: Democrats Brady Walkinshaw and April Sims and Republicans Joe Fain and Paul Graves.

The commissioners approved the minutes from their previous meeting and then vanished from public view for deliberations in separate caucuses, each with two commissioners. They evidently thought that, because neither caucus had a quorum of the full commission, they could avoid open deliberations as required by the Open Public Meetings Act – RCW 42.30.

After several hours of closed caucuses, the full commission convened in public a few minutes before midnight. With no public deliberations, they voted on documents that observers never saw.

Did the commission vote on documents in draft or final form? Was the public’s input taken into account? Those are questions without answers because the panel pulled a veil over its work.

In the weeks that followed, the Washington state Supreme Court declined to intervene and accepted the commission’s work as “substantially” complete. The justices, however, did not consider whether the commission violated the Open Public Meetings Act, leaving open the door for legal challenges.

By ignoring the intent of the state’s Open Public Meeting Act (OPMA), the commission kept in the dark the very people it was supposed to serve – Washington citizens.

Washington’s OPMA established a default setting for state and local governing bodies: “that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly.”

The statute goes on to say, “The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”

Open meetings give citizens the ability to know what their government is doing and fully participate in civic life. Citizens also act as counterweights to those who are paid to represent particular interests.

Citizens who participate in open meetings represent the public interest. That is almost impossible to do if the public isn’t there.

Other downsides of closed meetings and private dealings include:

•Bad process produces bad outcomes.

•Taxpayer money is wasted.

•Legislators are deprived of public support to counter influence that may not be in the best interest of communities.

A 2018 study examined the effects of less government monitoring when newspapers close. The consequences included higher government wages and deficits, and increased likelihood of unplanned expenditures. Municipal borrowing costs increased approximately $650,000 per issue when jurisdictions go to the bond market.

Clearly, decisions made without observation are expensive.

The commission’s transparency failures are especially troubling because of the role it plays in our citizen-driven form of government. The panel convenes every 10 years to draw the lines of Washington’s legislative and congressional districts.

Those boundaries determine who represents us in Olympia and Washington, D.C. By largely deliberating over boundaries in secret, the commission made it impossible for voters to know how their representation was determined.

That is an affront to our national principle that sovereignty belongs to the people.

Washington has a good Open Public Meetings Act. We must insist that our public officials follow it – and live up to it in spirit.

Lunell Haught of Spokane is president of the League of Women Voters of Washington, and George Erb of Bellevue is secretary of the Washington Coalition for Open Government.