Ft. Myers News-Press

OPEN RECORDS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER TO PROTECT

You are needed in the fight to preserve Florida's strong heritage of open government.

Newspapers across Florida and the country are observing today as "Sunshine Sunday," kicking off a weeklong effort to highlight the importance of open government and the threats to it.

Specifically, we want to remind people of Florida's great pioneering tradition of open government, and that public records and public meetings laws are the living foundation of that tradition.

As always when the Legislature gathers in Tallahassee for its annual regular session, bills are in the works designed to limit your access to your government. Barbara A. Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation, based in Tallahassee, sums it up in characteristically blunt language: "It's shaping up as a suck-o session."

Well over 100 exemptions are being sought this session, more than last year, with more expected. As always we will ask you to help us resist these impositions, which we will discuss in detail this week. Note that in past sessions, citizens have been able to help beat back the majority of serious threats to open government by calling legislators and making them focus on the issue, instead of letting these things slip through unnoticed.

A PUBLIC RIGHT

Open records and meetings are not just a media fetish. The rights involved are public rights, just as important to the individual citizen, the activist group, the crusading blogger or the interest group advancing its cause as they are to the news media.

We play a special role, of course, in using these records to bring information to the public.

For example, in 2005, The News-Press sued government agencies twice seeking access to records we believed should have been public, but which were being withheld. We and two other Gannett papers in Florida sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency for records on their hurricane recovery efforts, a fight that continues. The Associated Press, E.W. Scripps Co., Media General Corp. and the Tribune Co., have joined us in that fight.

In another case we successfully petitioned the circuit court for records about a Guatemalan teenager who had been brought to this country and forced into slavery.

NEW MEDIA

But the shape of information media is changing.

People and organizations outside the mainstream media are participating in news-gathering and sharing as never before, thanks to the Internet. Our own readers find increasing opportunities to use public records on the Internet, and they certainly expect us to use such opportunities to the fullest and provide them with a venue for these important discussions.

Our Web site, news-press.com, for example, gives us the opportunity to publish documents that might be too long for our print edition. This gives readers an unprecedented opportunity to view the basic documents for themselves, documents we sometimes have to fight for in court.

Our readers are among the independent information activists playing an increasing role in the news. They should be our partners in defending open government.

The Internet holds rich promise for open government. More government records are being put online every day, and citizens should support this practice lustily.

It is in your interest, and the interest of anyone who cares about government accountability, to urge our leaders in Tallahassee to keep public records public.

Reproduced courtesy of the Ft. Myers News-Press.
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