This past weekend the Seattle Times ran an editorial and cartoon from Pulitzer Prize-recipient David Horsey belatedly praising the efforts of the Washington Coalition for Open Government (WCOG) and longtime president Toby Nixon for their work to promote more transparency in our government process.
This is needed more now than ever as Democrat and liberal lawmakers continue their attempts to remove the public from state political processes.
Democrats in Washington continue to prove that British aristocrat Lord Acton was correct when he famously observed, “Absolute power, corrupts absolutely.”
Increasingly liberals have abused their powers by seeking to remove the public from our state’s decision-making processes and to keep their political actions private. In just the past year DEMOCRATS have:
- illegally conducted public business in backrooms away from public view;
- defended efforts to negotiate large contracts with government employee unions in secret,
- deleted official texts which have been sought in public records requests;
- refused to defend the state’s public redistricting process from a lawsuit by a liberal special interest groups;
- included fake “emergency” language in their unpopular state income tax legislation which prevents the public from repealing the tax through a citizens’ vote;
- sought to eliminate initiatives and referendums in odd-numbered years;
- continued to shut out the public from legislative hearings (saying it was due to COVID restrictions, yet 17,000 people were safely gathering indoors to watch Seattle Kraken games or attend music concerts);
- illegally used taxpayer money to promote partisan activities;
- Pushed to remove public advisory votes on tax measures from ballots;
- and worst of all, refused to end Governor Jay Inslee’s 752 days (and counting) of denying legislators, local health officials, and the public from having any input on how the state should manage its COVID response.
While it is bad enough that we could easily come up with 10 examples of how Democrat lawmakers have recently attempted to remove the public from the political process, we are sure there have been many more. This exclusionary mindset from the Democrats is likely the result of 1) being in power for a long period of time, and 2) a liberal media which is unwilling to question the actions of Democrat lawmakers and their special interest allies.
This could change after this November when the voters of Washington can make their views known.
We should note that former Republican state legislator and current Kirkland City Councilman Toby Nixon was honored at a recent WCOG event for his continued efforts to promote open government principles, with the open government advocacy group naming their annual award after him. For more information on WCOG, please read Shift’s September 2021 interview with Councilmember Nixon.
