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Sunshine Sunday

Transparency in government is vital to preventing abuses of power, but the Legislature continues to try to put more information out of the public's reach.

Open government isn't just an essential tool for journalists. It is the way the public holds government accountable - uncovering wrongdoing and acting as a check against the abuse of power. Citizens have a right to know what their elected leaders are doing with the power entrusted to them, whether they are using it to advance the public interest or special interests.

Without laws protecting the public's access to government records, we wouldn't know how much politicians are spending to build a road or what company won the contract. We wouldn't be told how much the chief of police makes or how often excessive force is used by his department. It is when government operates in secret that violations of the public trust are most likely to occur.

Since 2002, newspaper editorial pages across the state have banded together in an annual "Sunshine Sunday" to remind readers of the vital function served by transparency in government. This year, "Sunshine Sunday" has gone national. Newspapers, broadcasters and other media across the nation will spend this entire week speaking to the need to keep government records accessible and meetings open.

Florida has long been committed to having its public officials operate in the sunshine. The state Constitution and state law broadly protect open records and meetings. Even so, every year the Legislature considers dozens of new exemptions to put information beyond the public's reach. So far 1,030 exemptions have passed. And they keep coming.

The Legislature has been in session only one week, and already there are two proposals of particular concern. Senate Bill 2218 would make it much more difficult for the public to track bad doctors. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Burt Saunders, R-Naples, says that adverse incident reports filed against doctors are not public records, as they currently are. What is even more disturbing is that the bill claims to be implementing the constitutional amendment passed in November that was intended to give the public more access to information on the medical mistakes of doctors. Instead, the bill would bar anyone other than patients from having access to physician adverse incident reports and throw up new barriers for patients who seek such information.

Another threat to open government is House Bill 1509, sponsored by Rep. David Coley, R-Marianna, which would grant wide-ranging exemptions to the Florida Vaccine Research Institute, a proposed public-private partnership to be housed at Florida A&M University. Millions of dollars of public money would go to fund the institute, but the bill would keep internal audit reports, some board meetings and corporate officer and employee personnel information from public view.

The state's commitment to open government also could be threatened this year by the work of the Committee on Privacy and Court Records, appointed in 2003 by then-Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Harry Anstead. The committee's job is to determine whether new restrictions should be imposed on court records as they move from paper form to the Internet. Even the word "privacy" in the committee's title suggests opposition to public access.

There may be some sensitive personal information in a subset of court records, particularly those from family court, that should be withheld from public view. But the presumption should be that anything available to the public in paper form should also be available through the Internet. The committee has until July 1 to make recommendations.

Meanwhile in Washington, open records laws are under ferocious attack from the Bush administration. For example, a 2001 executive order by Bush allows former presidents and vice presidents, including his father, to keep documents secret beyond the 12-year period established by federal law. The post-9/11 era is one of the worst for open government at the federal level, as the fight against terrorism has resulted in unwarranted secrecy.

Without open government our democracy would be hobbled and corrupted. As James Madison said, "a popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy or perhaps both." The impulse of incompetent and corrupt government officials is to hide behind a veil of secrecy. Only the active engagement of citizens can keep government in the sunshine.

[Last modified March 13, 2005, 00:22:15]