Gov. Jay Inlsee on Tuesday will sign into law Attorney General Bob Ferguson\u2019s agency-request bill to increase transparency in government by enhancing penalties for knowing violations of Washington\u2019s Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The OPMA requires meetings of multimember, public-agency governing bodies such as city councils, county commissions, school boards and many state boards to be open and accessible to the public.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Senate Bill 6171 will modernize the out-of-date penalty provisions of the OPMA. The current penalty for violating the OPMA is $100, unchanged since the act was enacted in 1971. The new law will increase the penalty to $500 for a first-time knowing violation, roughly in line with inflation. It will also enact a new $1,000 \u201crepeat violator\u201d penalty for a subsequent knowing violation of the act.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThis bipartisan bill promotes the open and honest government Washingtonians demand and deserve,\u201d said Ferguson in a media release. \u201cWhen the law requires an open meeting, yet officials knowingly close the door on the public, they must be held accountable with meaningful penalties.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Sen. Pam Roach, R-Sumner, was prime sponsor of the bill.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people have a right to know what their officials are doing and hold them accountable for those decisions,\u201d Roach said in a prepared statement. \u201cThis update of the law will mean those officials who knowingly and repeatedly violate our open meetings law will now face a real penalty \u2014 one strong enough to protect the public’s right to know.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Jay Inlsee on Tuesday will sign into law Attorney General Bob Ferguson\u2019s agency-request bill to increase transparency in government by enhancing penalties for knowing violations of Washington\u2019s Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":4065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4064"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4064"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}