February 22, 2006

SHORT TAKES

Workers’ family leave bill in Olympia

Activists are campaigning this month for state legislators to pass a Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). The proposed bill had hearings last Thursday before the Senate Labor, Commerce, and Research & Development Committee, and on Monday before the House Commerce and Labor Committee.

The Washington bill, if approved, would act in the same way as the federal FMLA act, which currently protects workers from losing their jobs for up to 12 weeks in the event they need to take time off to care for a sick relative, be treated or recover from a serious illness, or attend to a new baby.

The Washington bill, however, suggests two significant revisions: one is to change the minimum number of employees from 50 to 25 so that an additional 330,000 Washington workers would benefit from FMLA coverage if needed, and the other is to place domestic partnerships under the category of “family members.”

Marilyn Watkins, the policy director at The Economic Opportunity Institute — the organization leading the statewide FMLA coalition — says that while these changes would mark “only a small step forward, it is an extremely important one.”

Important, of course, because more workers would be eligible for coverage, but proponents of the bill are also experiencing a sense of urgency. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has on its agenda to place new regulations on the federal FMLA, including redefining what constitutes a “serious health condition,” and making it more difficult for workers to benefit from intermittent leave.

“ The Chamber sees a friendly administration in the White House right now that they may not have in the future, so they are taking advantage of that,” Watkins explains. “They want to make changes to roll back the opportunities workers already have now in the event things change come mid-term elections” in 2006.

Regardless of what restrictions might pass at the federal level, if the Washington FMLA passed, the state would at least have the reassurance that certain additional rights are being extended to its workers.

— Emma Dumain

Government ungagged

Rob McKenna and Toby Nixon don’t want lawyers to become potted plants. When public officials bring a city attorney into a meeting or send him or her a copy of a memo, the attorney general and state representative say, they’re often using the lawyer as a prop to foil public disclosure laws.

The foil is attorney-client privilege, a cloak of secrecy that many officials are using illegally. McKenna and Nixon (R-Kirkland) are working to stop the practice in a series of measures they talked about Jan. 14 at a meeting of the Seattle Neighborhood Coalition.

McKenna is about to finish a set of public disclosure guidelines that local agencies can consult for clarification — but won’t be bound by. Nixon introduced a whopping 32 bills last week aimed at beefing up public disclosure laws.

One, House Bill 2515, would keep agencies from using attorney-client privilege unless the requested records actually pertain to a pending lawsuit. Otherwise, Nixon says, a city attorney is an employee of taxpayers, not the mayor or city council.

Two other bills, H.B. 2547 and H.B. 2548, would hold a public official personally accountable for intentionally violating the Open Public Meetings or Public Records acts. The bills would increase penalties to a maximum of $5,000 and a year in jail, up from today’s maximum of $100 per incident or day of delay.

Today’s penalities “are kind of a joke,” Nixon says. “Agencies consider the [fines] part of the cost of doing business. That’s not right.”

— Cydney Gillis