TACOMA — An open government advocate said Thursday he is filing suit in King County asking a judge to declare a series of secret meetings between the port commissions of Tacoma and Seattle illegal.
Arthur West, an Olympia resident who has made a career of challenging government secrecy, said he believes commission members have wrongly held private meetings to discuss how the two ports can improve their competitive stance in the maritime business.
The two port commissions have held eight meetings, including one Wednesday at Sea-Tac Airport, from which the public was barred, in an attempt to reach agreement on new strategies to attract more shipping business to Puget Sound.
The commissions say their lawyers have advised them that such executive sessions are legal under federal law governing the Federal Maritime Commission. The two ports sought and received Federal Maritime Commission approval to discuss joint marketing and operating strategies early last spring.
But West says the state’s Open Public Meetings Act is not preempted by federal law as the ports’ attorneys say.
That state law provides that port commissions may hold private sessions only under narrow circumstances such as when discussing national security matters, pending litigation, real estate issues and personnel matters.
“The Washington State Open Public Meetings Act is not, and never has been preempted by federal law, and any such preemption would violate the 10th Amendment, which provides that ‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people,’ ” West said in his legal complaint.
West said his research indicates that while the FMC rules allow it to keep the notes and minutes from such joint meetings private, that provision in federal law was designed to keep outsiders from seeking disclosure of those documents under the federal Freedom of Information Act, not to govern or dictate whether local governmental bodies could have secret meetings.
That’s the same conclusion reached this week by Seattle attorney Michele Earl-Hubbard, a lawyer whose practice focuses on open government issues.
