OpEds

“Sunshine is the best disinfectant,” Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

The esteemed Justice Brandeis was ahead of his time. His observation fits exceptionally well with national Sunshine Week, which starts today. The annual event, launched in 2005, champions and celebrates openness in government.

Gov. Charlie Crist promised a more open and accessible government when he took office more than three years ago. Now sweeping reforms proposed by a blue-ribbon panel he convened could deliver the most consequential expansion of government transparency since 1992, when Florida voters enshrined government-in-the-sunshine in the state Constitution. Florida has a chance, once again, to lead the nation in insuring open government. That’s a policy every Tallahassee politician that believes in democracy should find easy to support.

As a young lawyer, I worked for a little while on some of the litigation that grew out of the collapse of Home State Savings Bank (and much of the rest of Ohio’s saving and loan industry) in the mid-1980s. That’s not much of a surprise, since virtually every firm in town was involved in one way or the other.

The New York Freedom of Information Law (“FOIL”) was first enacted in 1974 and later replaced with the key elements of the current version of the law in 1978. Think of the 70's: high tech was an electric typewriter, and many of us used carbon paper to make copies. PC’s were not on our desks or in our homes, and the internet and email and had not yet become part of our lives. 

Virginia's Freedom of Information Act guarantees citizens and journalists the right to attend public meetings and obtain public records, with very limited exceptions.  What's amazing is that this wasn't always the law--Virginia adopted its Freedom of Information Act in 1968, two years after Congress enacted the federal Freedom of Information Act. 

With its Jan. 21, 2010, ruling on Citizens United v FEC, the United States Supreme Court overturned a longstanding ban on the use of corporate profits to fund political advocacy—a ban spawned decades earlier by bald, wholesale corruption in politics in this country.

Kim de Bourbon is executive director of the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition, a nonprofit group that helps citizens understand and use the state’s open records and open meetings laws through its Web site at www.pafoic.org. She can be reached at info@openrecordspa.org or (570) 994-5748

Every day, the federal government releases vast amounts of useful information about every aspect of our nation and how government works. This public information has a deep impact on almost every aspect of American life. Some of it can be used to hold our elected officials accountable for their actions, or have a profound effect on health, economic development and commerce. The problem is, much of this government information is too often hard to find, difficult to understand, expensive to obtain in useful formats, and available in only a few locations.There is a solution to this problem: the Internet.

While there have been some broken promises along the way – posting all bills on the Internet five days before signing them and the pledge for televised health care negotiations on C-SPAN – the Obama administration has introduced a number of initiatives to, in essence, do what Toto did to the Wizard of Oz – pull back the curtain for all to see.

Several weeks ago, for four consecutive days, we published a box on our Opinion page seeking nominations for Sunshine Week "Local Heroes," citizens who have played a role in ensuring open meetings and access to public documents in their communities. Readers were encouraged to nominate someone – including themselves – who they felt was deserving of such recognition and to contact me with a brief note detailing why. So how many nominations do you think I received?

Next Sunday, we, along with other media in the state, will kick off Sunshine Sunday 2010, an event organized by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, during which most newspapers in Florida will write a week's worth of editorials, columns and cartoons regarding the importance of a free and open press, able to watchdog governmental doings.