Government Works Best in Sunshine

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Sunshine Week starts Sunday. Newspapers, media organizations and good-government organizations will publish columns, editorials and other material to raise awareness of how we must be vigilant to protect the public’s right to know.

That right is constantly under attack, in Texas and on the federal level. Hillary Clinton’s use of private email while secretary of state has caused a stink, as it should have. Fortunately, the negative publicity compelled the impending release of those emails, which should never have been on a private server. But that is a common practice. Former Gov. Rick Perry, a presumptive presidential candidate, lambasted Clinton for her “non-transparency,” as he put it. Perry ought to look in the mirror, since he used a personal email account to communicate with members of the University of Texas board of regents. That is just as non-transparent as Clinton.

I have spent an entire career doing my modest part for open government and the public’s access to information. My first involvement came when, at age 26, I was running a small weekly in San Augustine and covering a city council meeting. The city manager abruptly took the council into executive session, even though there was no agenda item allowing that action, and nothing on the agenda that qualified to be discussed in secret: personnel, litigation or real estate transactions. I stood up and asked the city attorney how the council could legally go into secret session. He blew me off with a non-answer.

The next week, I wrote a lengthy editorial that started with the chorus from a Charlie Rich song: “No one knows what goes on behind closed doors.” And I chastised the attorney in particular for not following the law, since as an officer of the court he should know better. I had the righteous indignation of a young whippersnapper and fulminated for about 500 words — long for an editorial. The city attorney and I became good friends after that, and the council obeyed the open meetings law at least during my tenure there.

For about five sessions I served on the legislative advisory committee for the Texas Press Association and Texas Daily Newspaper Association. Every two weeks during the session we would meet in Austin to discuss bills that affect newspapers or the public’s right to know. The efforts to chip away at freedom of information laws are unending. Too many of these bills are successful, such as making it more difficult to get the details of auto accidents, or the addresses of public officials. The school board lobby managed to make it all but impossible to know who has applied to be a superintendent until a finalist is named. So did colleges and universities. But who has applied to be a city manager is still public record. Go figure.

I am still involved as a board member of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, but my job duties this session have kept me largely on the sidelines. At a meeting last week, our director and those working furiously to change bad bills and pass good ones gave an update. One of the biggest threats this session, and every session for the past 15 years, is the attempt to end the requirement that legal notices be published in a newspaper.

The bills would allow government entities to only put them on their websites, saving money (though not that much in the big picture), but making it much harder for taxpayers to find. Where I live, in Gregg County, to look at all legal notices if they were online only would require going to the websites of seven school districts, eight incorporated cities, one public college and the county. That totals 17 different websites to find legals in one of the geographically smallest counties in Texas. Imagine the task of keeping up with public notices in Harris County if they were scattered among all the public entities there?

Public notices help keep government officials honest about bids and other matters of interest to citizens. Besides, some smaller public entities don’t even have websites. Ending publication of legal notices in newspapers (which also put them on their websites) would largely seal off public access to those notices except by the most dogged of citizens. Folks who don’t have Internet access — and there are plenty of people in East Texas who do not — would be completely shut out.

My experience with the public officials in Titus County in nine months here has been very positive. We are given whatever we ask for, promptly and willingly. That has not always been the case in places I worked. Just four years ago I was forced to file a complaint with the attorney general because the Leander police chief would not release the routine incident reports — even though they are clearly public record.

Why does that matter? It means that in Leander, if the fellow down the street was arrested for child molestation, his neighbors would never know except possibly by hearsay. Or if there have been a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood, how else would residents find out about it if police reports are kept secret?

An assistant attorney general used “telephone justice,” yelling at the chief that he had to obey the law, just like everybody else. That did the trick, luckily, and we started getting the reports.

Remember that the media have no more right to this information than you do. That is what Sunshine Week is all about. You have the same right to request information, whether it is a police incident report or district clerk records, as a newspaper reporter does. You also have the right to attend public meetings just as we do. (You don’t necessarily have the right to speak, depending on the rules.)

Not much grows well in the dark. Government operates best in the sunlight. After nearly 40 years in this business, I believe that more than ever.

 

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