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Sunshine Week 2006 Online Gallery One

Published: March 27, 2006
Last Updated: April 05, 2006

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The San Jose Mercury News didn't just endorse open government legislation, it wrote its own Sunshine Law and invited readers to comment.

"Yes, we'll acknowledge up front that it's a bit unusual for a newspaper to get into the law-drafting business. And we know other sunshine ordinances have been proposed by council members," Executive Editor Susan Goldberg wrote in a letter to readers.

"But as an organization that spends hundreds of thousands of dollars each year fighting to bring information into the public realm, we have a lot of familiarity with what's common practice across the Bay Area and in California— and where San Jose comes up woefully short," she continued.

"We offer this draft sunshine law as a way to start the conversation about how our government can better serve the people."

The paper received about 30 responses to the legislation, all in favor. The mayor, however, was considerably less enamored of the proposal, calling it "a bunch of nonsense," but ultimately he was outvoted 10-1 in a city council debate over whether to pursue development of a Sunshine Law.

Florida was the birthplace of Sunshine Sunday, and the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors was its founder.

In 2006, every major daily newspaper in the state participated in the state's fifth Sunshine Sunday.

As it has each year, FSNE collects the editorials, cartoons, columns and related stories on its Web site.

Singing "The Open Records Blues" The quest for government information frequently leaves reporters and the public singing the blues. In this case, however, two Wisconsin men really are singing "The Open Records Blues." Read more and hear the song online here.

Gov. Tom Vilsack proclaimed March 12-18 to be "Sunshine Week" in Iowa. The proclamation was requested by The Associated Press as part of the news cooperative's efforts to bring attention to open government issues.

The proclamation read, in part, that "the terror-ridden and despotic regimes around the world have shown that democracy cannot flourish when the public’s right to know is compromised."

The signing by the governor during a brief ceremony March 9 was attended by Carol Ann Riha, AP Iowa chief of bureau, and Mike Glover, AP political writer, who are pictured here with Vilsack.

The Eastern Progress, campus newspaper of Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, published a staff written editorial and an editorial cartoon from the national Sunshine Week Toolkit to mark Sunshine Week.

Pointing out to students that Sunshine Week isn't "some kind of code for Spring Break," the Perspective column noted that, "the annual event is a lot more important than remembering to bring tanning lotion and limiting the amount of alcoholic beverages you consume on the beach."

The editorial clearly explained the Sunshine Law and why lawmakers and the university administration must operate with a presumption of openness. "Keeping public records public may not seem like that big of a deal, but it's a lot like free speech—you don't realize how valuable it is until it's taken away."

Working together to produce a televised forum on the importance of open government, a newspaper, television station, civic group and library in Washington state embodied the scope of Sunshine Week and its importance to the public.

The discussion, which coincided with a nationwide teleforum, was broadcast by Olympia community-access channel TCTV, and was produced by a partnership of The Olympian, the League of Women Voters Thurston County and the Timberland Regional Library.

In the photo here by Steven M. Herppich, courtesy of The Olympian, TCTV's executive director prepares the panelists for the show. A report on the program and a link to a video of the broadcast, as well as other Sunshine Week coverage is on The Olympian's Web site.

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