The Villages Daily Sun

Let the sun shine on the public’s business

So, you think only the media should have a vested interest in open records and open meetings laws?

Think again.

If you vote, own property, pay taxes, have children in school or drive on a highway, you have a legitimate interest in seeing that government operates in plain sight and that the records of those actions are readily accessible.

The vitality of our representative form of government depends upon each of us having free, unfettered access to the records of all the business that is conducted by our government.

Each of us has a valid interest in government being conducted in the sunshine, but the responsibility of monitoring compliance with open meeting and open records laws generally falls to those of us in the Fourth Estate who earn our livelihood by reporting on the activities of those who govern us.

It is not an easy task because even the most honest, conscientious public servants may be able to rationalize shrouding some of their more sensitive actions from the public.

Then there are the dishonest, corrupt public officials who want to make sweetheart deals with friends or business associates using our tax money without our knowledge.

But whatever the intent, public officials should be working on the public’s behalf and should conduct the public’s business in the sunshine whenever practicable.

For the voters to carry out their obligations in a representative form of government, they must have all of the information available concerning the deliberations of their public servants and the resulting decisions. The withholding of that information is censorship, pure and simple.

A plethora of regulations exists on the local, state and federal levels to ensure public access to information regarding the actions of government officials and agencies. Most of those regulations are modeled after the federal Freedom of information Act, the primary instrument used to obtain public records from the federal government.

But sunshine laws, as they are called, are riddled with enough exemptions to allow almost any government official to keep almost any public record safe from the prying eyes of the public, if he or she so wishes.

And the quest to keep public records public has become more of an uphill battle in the security-conscious atmosphere postdating the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Within a month after the terrorist attacks, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft directed federal agencies to look for a legal reason to reject requests for records requested under the FOIA before considering those requests further.

Since then, the number of FOIA requests processed by federal agencies has fallen by about 13 percent and the number of records classified by the government in an attempt to exempt them from FOIA requests has nearly doubled.

In response to this trend toward more secrecy in government, the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors began observing Sunshine Sunday in 2002. In 2005, the American Society of Newspaper Editors used a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to launch the first nationwide observance of Sunshine Week.

On this Sunshine Sunday, newspapers throughout Florida are publishing news stories and editorials, and participating in special programs and activities in their communities, in support of government in the sunshine. The Daily Sun is proud to join in that observance.

It is vital to our form of government that voters/taxpayers have all of the information necessary to make informed decisions about the actions of those who govern them.

From where we stand, any effort to shield the government’s business from view by its constituents represents censorship, and there is no place for censorship in an otherwise free and open society.

Author Heywood Broun said nearly 60 years ago, “A case of sorts can be made out for censorship in any field, if you can imagine the job being administered by the wisest man in the world.”

Considering the fact that there are very few public servants today with the wisdom of Solomon, we think it is in the best interests of all Americans to lend our strongest support to the concept of government in the sunshine.

Reproduced courtesy of The Villages Daily Sun.
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