(Editor's note: this article has been edited to reflect Seattle City Council action at its April 27 meeting of the whole.)

The openness President Obama is bringing to D.C. hasn’t reached a Seattle still in its Bush era, complete with unearned claims of "mission accomplished." True, the city council committed in April 2008 to develop a plan to make government open, and easy to participate in, but a year later there’s no draft, not even a request for input.

And some city actions have hurt openness. First, do no harm--then merit your claims, as follows:

(1) Mayor Greg Nickels must release his grip on the bureaucracy’s sharing of information. More than any recent mayor, he requires city employees to have permission from his political circle before talking to the press or even the council.

(2) City council must stop its closed, “serial” meetings that violate the spirit and letter of the state Open Public Meetings Act. Less than a majority of council members shouldn’t meet (in person, by phone, or e-mail) in a series to keep the public from seeing the discussion or decisions.

(3) Archive e-mails for at least a year. Currently, they’re automatically deleted after 45 days, unless the city employee who sent or received them does the archiving, which few take the time for--and all have a potential conflict of interest in deleting messages that are illegal, unethical, or politically embarrassing. Documents are disappearing before the public even learns about them.

(4) Channel 21 should resume rebroadcast of council meetings in prime evening and weekend slots, with closed captioning (as Channel 23 does for the legislature). It should Web cast more boards and commissions, adding to its good start with the parks and library boards and the ethics and elections commission.

(5) As the county does, have a city ombudsman, to help the public when officials are intransigent and there’s nowhere else to turn.

(6) Decades after it was first required to do so by the state Public Records Act (RCW 42.56.070), Seattle should index orders, policies, goals, plans, manuals, instructions, and related documents regarding the rights of the public (a very small fraction of city documents). Contrary to its name, the council’s “special committee on open government” recommended on April 17 and the full council unanimously adopted on April 27 an ordinance making the outrageous "finding" that this requirement "is unduly burdensome and would interfere with city operations and such a list is nearly impossible to create and/or maintain."

The council couldn’t have been more wrong! Helping the public find information isn't a burden; its central to democracy. Without an index, citizens lack timely, reasonable access to the rules that affect them. And in this digital age, it's easier to index, and in a way that enhances city operations. Having never made a good faith effort to obey this decades-old requirement, Seattle shouldn’t evade it now. Put these documents on the Web site, where some already are. Some others are on a restricted “in-web,” which should be accessible to the public.

(7) City Attorney Tom Carr, the mayor, and council shouldn’t keep from the public legal analyses that aren’t about a pending case—a huge loophole they obtained, in league with the Monorail Authority, 5-4 at the state supreme court in 2004. Most previous city attorneys published opinions for the public’s benefit. The city has lost millions in court that could’ve been avoided if its weak case had been exposed to debate. Public vetting is free and often superior to what’s said in secret. Keeping these taxpayer-funded analyses from the public harms democracy.

The council is even withholding from the public the advice it’s received on public meetings and public records--including on a charter amendment it refused to put on the ballot that would have limited to pending cases its withholding of legal advice! Even with the prospect of pending cases, the president released legal advice that the justice department provided the CIA on its torture methods. Surely the mayor and city council, when there’s no pending case, can afford to share with the public the far less sensitive legal advice they receive.

Conclusion. Seattle hasn’t earned its self-congratulations on open government—it’s behind many other jurisdictions. When public officials choose what the public is allowed to know, democracy is lost. Citizens cannot ensure accountability without full and timely information about what government is doing.

Let’s all take to heart the powerful declaration of state law in RCW 42.30.010: “The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”

The next meeting of the Seattle City Council's Special Committee on Open Government is Friday, May 1, 9:30 a.m. in the council chambers at city hall.

Chris Leman is a political scientist (Ph.D., Harvard University) who volunteers on open government issues for the Seattle Community Council Federation and the Washington Coalition for Open Government.