Employee secrecy bill won’t protect vulnerable workers

MARCH 27, 2023 — A bill in the Washington state Senate that intends to protect some government employees from such crimes as domestic violence, stalking and harassment is in fact bad policy with false promises for potential victims and the public.

ESHB 1533 would create a pathway for state and public school employees to hide certain personal information from the public record by giving their agency a statement saying they are, and expect to be, subject to domestic violence, stalking, harassment and similar crimes.

The draft legislation would create a class of ghost employees who would disappear from the public record, making it harder for the public and the press to find out what their government is doing and hold its employees accountable. 

The Senate Committee on State Government and Tribal Relations on Tuesday is expected to consider an alternative to the bill already passed by the House. While the alternative is an improvement and we prefer it to the original bill, it is still bad policy and should not become law.

We want the government and community organizations to protect anyone at risk of domestic violence, stalking and harassment. They deserve our empathy and help.

But ESHB 1533 won’t make our vulnerable neighbors safer. What it gives them instead is a false sense of security.

The bill in its current form would carve a path for some government workers to pull “personally identifying information” out of the public record. Such information includes the employee’s name, job title, job site, bargaining unit and contact information. Also secret is any related documentation held by the agency.

State and public school workers who qualify for ESHB 1533’s veil of secrecy would become ghost employees – including employees who are themselves abusers or intent on avoiding accountability.

As a result, ESHB 1533 could make the government’s vulnerable employees not more safe, but less so if their tormenters use the bill’s provisions to disappear from public view.

“Transparency” and “accountability” may be high level concepts, but they have on-the-ground consequences for everyone, as recent news accounts show. Too little is known about 31 people who died in 15 county jail systems in Washington state since 2021 because of agency reporting failures. The unusual 2022 death of a hiker in Lewis County, Washington, remained a mystery for months, until public records finally shed light on what happened and how the government handled the case.

Historically, coaches on the public payroll have been exposed as child abusers, a prison guard was found to be the leader of a violent motorcycle gang and the failure of 48 state social-service workers to protect children in the foster care system led to court orders for the state to pay out more than $166 million in personal-injury claims. Clearly, the ranks of state and school workers can and have included miscreants, corrupt individuals and even criminals. The public needs to be protected, too.

ESHB 1533 makes victims less safe, gives bad actors a place to hide and makes it harder for the public and the press to tell whether the government is acting wisely in their behalf. The bill is bad policy that will lead to bad outcomes.

We urge the Washington state Senate to hold the bill.