By Jim Camden

The Spokesman-Review

OLYMPIA — An effort to open some legislative records to the public while keeping others secret is likely dead, lawmakers acknowledged Tuesday morning.

The Senate bill, which received criticism from the leaders of news organizations at a hearing last week, is not scheduled for a vote in the Senate State Government committee before this week’s deadline. The House has no plans to introduce its own legislation.

“We were hoping that bill would start a conversation,” said Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig, D-Spokane, one of the bill’s co-sponsors.

The response from news media representatives, some of whom represent organizations suing the Legislature over refusal to release records, was negative, he said at a press conference for Democratic leader, and “that bill is definitely dead.”

House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan, D-Covington, said his members in the House were hoping the Senate bill would be the vehicle for solving the dispute. “There is not a (House) bill that is out there right now.”

Several news organizations in Washington, led by the Associated Press and including The Spokesman-Review, sued the Legislature after lawmakers rejected requests for public records, claiming they were exempt from the 1972 state Public Records Act under legislation they passed in the 1990s. But a Thurston County Superior Court judge ruled they are not exempt from releasing some of the records requested, and are covered under the same law that governs other local and state government agencies.

The case has been appealed to the Washington Supreme Court, and is expected to get a hearing later this year. Part of the Senate bill proposed this year would have made that case moot by applying its provisions retroactively.

Without a new bill on the topic, or parliamentary maneuvering to resurrect the Senate bill, that appeal will continue. “We’ll see what the court says,” Billig said.