The new Public Records and Open Government Unit will be staffed by at least 10 current employees who already handle records requests, according to the announcement. The role at the helm of the unit will be a new position, chief transparency counsel, which the office said will "be empowered to think holistically about the agency's process of responding to records requests and make changes across the organization to increase the agency's performance and efficiency."
"At a time of widespread mistrust in government, public access is as crucial as ever to let the public see our work for themselves," state Attorney General Nick Brown said in a statement, calling transparency "a key part of the work we do every day."
Requests received by the office roughly doubled between 2014 and 2024, rising from 528 to 1,032, the office said. The new unit's goal will be to "explore new solutions and improve existing processes to respond to this increase in requests," it added.
The Public Records and Open Government Unit will comprise the chief transparency counsel, two attorneys who currently handle public records requests and the agency's existing Public Records and Constituent Services Unit, according to Tuesday's announcement, which said the reorganization will strengthen leadership and provide the team with more resources.
Applications for the new chief transparency counsel role closed Tuesday, the AG's office said, with hopes to fill the position by the end of the year.
The establishment of the Public Records and Open Government Unit comes on the heels of Attorney General Nick Brown's proposed changes to model rules that guide state and local government responses to Public Records Act requests, which Brown announced Oct. 3.
A public hearing on the proposed changes is set for Thursday in Olympia, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Attendees can participate in person or virtually via Zoom.
Brown's proposal suggests agencies triage public records requests into two tracks, simple and complex, to ensure that simpler requests are fulfilled more quickly. When a request is for a single, identifiable record, the proposed rules would encourage the agency to include the record when sending an initial five-day response to the request.
The proposed changes also suggest that agencies make public records accessible for searching and production, which could also speed responses by minimizing staff workloads.
When agencies conclude work on a request, the proposed changes would have them send a formal closure letter to the requester. Those letters would inform them of the one-year time frame available to seek judicial review of a records request decision.
News agencies in August 2024 filed a petition complaining of "extreme backlogs" in public records requests. Brown subsequently began an informal rulemaking process, which he has said is intended to address delays encountered by journalists and others.
"Concerns about transparency and integrity in government are at an all-time high," Brown said in October, "and officials have an obligation to uphold the spirit of the Public Records Act."
--Editing by Amy French.
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