Senator: Privacy bill dead

BRAD SHANNON THE OLYMPIAN

OLYMPIA -- A bill that would keep the public from seeing collective bargaining records and conceal many police reports all but died Monday in the state Senate.

"Whether it's a good bill or a bad bill, it's a dead bill," said Sen. Georgia Gardner, D-Blaine, who sponsored Senate Bill 5058. She said she sponsored it a year ago to give cities with multiple labor agreements a way not to disclose their negotiating strategies from one session to parties in the next one.

The measure, cleared the Senate last year but was killed in the House. However, it was reintroduced in January and moved to a floor calendar Saturday, where it sat awaiting action before today's deadline for passing bills from their house of origin.

Sheldon comments

"Something's going on that's very fishy here, something that's cloaked in the end-of-session confusion," complained Sen. Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch.

Sheldon is among the lawmakers who misunderstood the measure when they voted for it last year.

Sheldon said it would keep secret the details of negotiating sessions between the governor and state labor unions, if separate legislation is approved to give state workers collective bargaining rights.

Sheldon also worried that another provision, backed by Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, would prevent police reports from being released publicly until an arrest was made or a case was sent to a prosecutor.

That would prevent the public from learning about crimes in their neighborhoods as they now do from such sources as newspaper crime maps, Sheldon said.

This time around, Sheldon wants to stop the bill -- or at least amend it so that collective bargaining information is not kept secret. He also wants to kill the police report provision.

Senate Majority Leader Sid Snyder, D-Long Beach, had pulled the bill to the floor for a vote on Saturday, but he said Monday that "it's held for now."

With today's deadline for non-budget-related bills to clear their house of origin, it means the bill is on its last legs and may not survive.

Rowland Thompson, executive director for Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington, was unwilling to pronounce the bill dead.

He said it would harm the public's interest by preventing the public from knowing what kind of strategy the governor took in negotiations, including the state's pay offers, and it would keep the public from knowing which jobs a union might be willing to kill off in exchange for preserving other work units. It also could hide whether jobs held by minorities were more likely to be offered for cuts.

Labor council

"No one is trying to hide the collective bargaining agreement," countered Robby Stern, lobbyist for the Washington State Labor Council.

Stern said collective bargaining would be injured without the bill because "people wouldn't take positions if they knew it would go public."

Although he spoke to senators about the bill, he insisted he wasn't pushing the bill, and it was a bit of a mystery who exactly was pushing the bill forward.

Gardner insisted that she did not know the bill was being resurrected and expressed shock that Snyder had pulled up the bill for consideration on the floor.

Snyder said he hadn't intended to bring that issue for a vote but was simply pulling up bills on behalf of his caucus members.

"It'll probably stay there (on the calendar) and not go anywhere," Snyder said.

"Hopefully that's going to happen."

He added, however, that he didn't know what the objection to the bill was because it had passed the Senate on a 47-1 vote last year.

"There's enough confusion that it's on hold," Sheldon said.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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