FOI Lets the Sun Shine In!

[Dr.Ken Sokolowski]

Let the

Sun Shine

The Connecticut Law Tribune
03-14-2005

Sometimes it's as close to home as the cop at the service desk who asks you why you want to see the incident report you asked for instead of just giving it to you. Or the city council members who gather at the local coffee shop to hash out how they'll keep a political pal on the payroll. Or the school board members who plot in executive session to thwart an investigation of a teacher accused of sexually abusing children.

Or maybe it's at the state capitol, where a citizen's request for the governor's budget projections languishes for months on a bureaucrat's desk. Or in Washington, where — well, you name it.

Legions of facts that once were routinely available no longer can be had because of irrational fear that their availability somehow could aid a terrorist's plot.

And each time it happens -- each time you or your neighbor is denied access to a public record on the whim of a public servant, or kept from knowing the peoples' business by a public body conspiring behind closed doors, another barrier grows between the people and the authorities who act in their name. Another bit of corrosion tarnishes the cautious trust that the governed must have in their government if a free society is to survive, let alone flourish.

The relationship between those with power and those who cede them that power never has been easy -- nor should it be. The temptation to misuse authority always looms. That's why the Founders wrote so many checks and balances into our constitution. It's why James Madison led the first Congress to offer the states the Bill of Rights -- 10 constitutional amendments they knew would be needed to keep that power limited.

It's why high among those amendments were guarantees of free speech and a free press -- guarantees, they believed, that would enable the people to know what their government was doing.

And it is why the Congress and the states, in the decades since, have passed Freedom of Information acts, laws designed to ensure that the politically powerful could not hide their actions from the public they serve. This year, Connecticut celebrates the 30th anniversary of its own Freedom of Information Act.

But in recent years, especially since the attacks of 9/11, governments at all levels increasingly have turned their backs on the principle of openness. Whether out of a genuine (if exaggerated) concern for national security, or a cynical opportunism to play on the public's apprehensions, alarming amounts of public information are now routinely withheld. That pool of secrecy widens each month.

That is why this newspaper -- and hundreds of other newspapers, magazines, broadcast outlets and other news media across the country -- will be doing something this week that we rarely do: campaigning in concert to raise public awareness of the threat to democratic values that this trend to secrecy poses. We, who normally thrive on competition, are raising a common chorus to warn of the dangers of closed government, and to remind all Americans that theirs is a birthright of openness and access.

We are calling this "Sunshine Week: Your Right to Know," as we and our media colleagues present stories and editorials explaining why open access to government information is so important -- not just to news-gatherers, but to all Americans.

At its heart this campaign shares these beliefs:
Knowledge is the key to freedom; transparency is the enemy of tyranny, and an informed public will make intelligent decisions.

Upon those concepts this nation has prospered.
Each is now under assault.
Their defense is our highest calling.

Highlighting and emphasis are mine. kes