A recent Washington State Supreme Court ruling is a welcome shot across the bow of public servants and agencies that might try to skirt open public records laws.

In a unanimous ruling Aug. 27 in the case Nissen v. Pierce County, the state High Court found that text messages created on Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lundquist’s private cell phone are indeed public records if they pertain to public business.

The decision is a loss for Lundquist who, since the messages were first requested in 2011, fought disclosure, according to an article published in The News Tribune.

Pierce County paid $304,000 to outside attorneys to defend Lindquist’s position, according to The News Tribune.

In Nissen v. Pierce County, sheriff’s detective Glenda Nissen filed a records request seeking phone records and texts from Lindquist’s private cell phone, according to court documents. Nissen said she believed that Lindquist retaliated against her during a long-running dispute.

In response to Nissen’s request, Lindquist provided a “call log” and a “text message log,” records showing dates and times, but not the content of his calls or texts. Portions of those documents were also blacked out.

The Supreme Court found that, although Lindquist paid for his own cell phone, he could not withhold information that clearly falls under the Public Records Act. This ruling means that agencies large and small, that either don’t understand how broad public records laws are, or believe they can beat the system, are required to be accountable to the public.

It’s a frustration for newspaper reporters here on Whidbey Island that obstacles are thrown before us in our attempts to obtain even the most innocuous of public records. Whidbey General Hospital, for example, has rebuffed our repeated requests for information packets in advance that the hospital board of commissioners receive prior to each meeting.

In fact, during the past two public meetings, the board initially didn’t even want to give our reporter a copy of a resolution they were voting on. This is an elected board essentially saying that it doesn’t want the public to know or understand what it is voting on.

To be clear, we are not asking for deeply guarded patient information, but rather the information the hospital board relies on when making its decisions on how to spend taxpayer dollars. Every month, our reporter is forced to make a formal request for basic information that other public agencies on the island — county and city — routinely provide.

Louis Brandeis, a former justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, stated it best: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

The people of Washington deserve transparency from their elected officials.

While Nissen v. Pierce County is certainly a victory for transparency, Whidbey General Hospital’s board of commissioners still needs to figure out that openness and transparency go a long way toward rebuilding the public trust.