Reporting on the dealings of government and other powerful public entities is built on a simple principle: The people have a right to know what elected and appointed officials do in the name of the public.
It’s not a radical idea; common sense tells us that if public entities are enacting laws and regulations that affect us, or if they’re spending public money, the people should know what’s going on. Yet it’s only through constant vigilance that the people’s right to know is exercised and defended. Monday marked the beginning of Sunshine Week, a celebration of press freedom and holding government accountable. Now more than ever that accountability is necessary.
It may come as a surprise to many that the laws guaranteeing access to government documents are a relatively recent development. The Freedom of Information Act, which forms the backbone of U.S. public access laws, was first drafted in 1955 and wasn’t passed into law until 1966. Even then, the law didn’t have much in the way of teeth — it was easy for government agencies to delay disclosure of documents more or less indefinitely without consequence. It was the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s that led to a beefing-up of the information access guarantees in the law, setting firm deadlines for compliance with requests for public information.
Mississippi also has some state-specific laws regarding access to public information. In particular, the Mississippi Open Meetings Act sets out specific rules related to public access and notification about meetings by governmental bodies, such as city council, board of supervisors, local school boards — or even lesser deliberative bodies such as commissions. It also spells out in detail the limited circumstances under which such groups can go into executive session out of public view.
Fortunately, it’s rare that government — at the local level, in particular — makes a concerted effort to avoid disclosure of public documents. For the most part, though governments such as the city and borough will require FOIA requests before releasing documents, they don’t intentionally drag out the process to avoid public scrutiny. But there are certainly exceptions.
Working as a journalist in two other states, I have become adept with how different local Open Meetings Acts vary. My biggest problem with Mississippi is its notification rule, where local bodies are really not required to notify the media or the public of special called meetings. The statue states, “Any public body which holds its meetings at such times and places and by such procedures as are specifically prescribed by statute shall continue to do so and no additional notice of such meetings shall be required except that a notice of the place, date, hour and subject matter of any recess meeting, adjourned meeting, interim meeting or any called special meeting shall be posted within one (1) hour after such meeting is called in a prominent place available to examination and inspection by the general public in the building in which the public body normally meets. A copy of the notice shall be made a part of the minutes or other permanent official records of the public body.”
This rule is incredibly outdated, especially in the technological age. As an example, when the Kosciusko School Board has a called meeting, it is not required to do anything more than post a note on the door 24 hours prior to meeting. So if you don’t drive by the building on a specific day, you would never know.
Of course, there is some good with the Open Meetings Act and FOIA, especially when it comes to regulating executive sessions and obtaining public records. However, there is still room for improvement.
Keeping government honest is a goal we all should care about. Sunshine Week, which takes its name from the adage the “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” celebrates the laws that support that goal and urges us to hold public servants accountable. At all levels of government, that’s a noble purpose.
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Joseph Brown is the editor and publisher of The Star-Herald. He can be reached at jbrown@starherald.net.
