Government – US – should ‘let the sunshine in’

Bill Knight column for 3-18, 19 or 20, 2019

On March 18 the national “Sunshine Week” ends, an annual event when public servants and journalists, the First Amendment and everyday Americans all are recognized, and basic transparency in our free republic is celebrated.

Sponsored by the American Society of News Editors and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Sunshine Week this year had the theme “It’s your right to know.”

That’s right; YOUR right. Government is all of us. As the Declaration of Independence says, government derives its “just powers from the consent of the governed.”

That means local, state and federal levels, plus townships, parks and libraries, and law enforcement, health departments and schools all must follow the sensible laws defining public documents, open meetings and citizens’ right to request material through Freedom of Information requests.

Before Louis Brandeis became a Supreme Court Justice, the progressive lawyer in 1914 said, “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants. The most important political office is that of the private citizen.”

After all, government officials and workers are elected or hired to serve the public. It’s like family members sharing household duties, people appointed to organize church suppers, or volunteers stepping up to harvest an ailing neighbor’s crops. When individuals fail in their responsibilities, things tend to disintegrate.

There are a handful of logical exemptions to open information, such as protecting juveniles’ identities, making personnel decisions, negotiating to buy property, and dealing with confidential court cases. However, even those exceptions are about details and deliberations that are appropriately kept private, not the eventual decisions and results themselves, which must be public: the hiring or firing of employees and their pay, what land was purchased and its price, settlements of lawsuits, trials, contracts, etc.

Still, a few officials still occasionally say, “That’s none of your business,” and others talk a good game but outright break the law. For example, Western Illinois University’s Board of Trustees violated the law last summer, according to former state Attorney General Lisa Madigan, by secretly planning layoffs of dozens of workers and making program cutbacks in closed sessions instead of required public discussions in open meetings.

Another state official, Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos, said, “Regardless of the different responsibilities in their positions – local select boards, the governor of Vermont, the president of the U.S., and even me as Vermont’s secretary of state – [we] all share one thing: a responsibility to uphold the public’s trust by being transparent and accountable in everything we do. Our boss is the public.”

            Thank God, compared to most of the world, U.S. citizens have impressive, even unprecedented, access to government.

But we all must be vigilant in ensuring openness in our government amid some officials’ temptation to exert “privacy” rights that don’t exist.

As another Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart, said, “There is a big difference between what we have the right to do and what is right.”