Whose government is it?

By Paul Jacob, The Sam Adams Alliance March 22, 2007

Sunshine Week was last week. But we've learned some lessons that should carry us long beyond spring. Spearheaded by the American Society of Newspaper Editors as "a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information," Sunshine Week mainly revealed a lot of closed doors. According to the Sunshine Week 2007 National Information Audit, governments have shown a disappointing lack of regard for following the law when it comes to the Freedom of Information Act or open records requests.

The study found that more "than a third of public officials audited refused to provide access to their local Comprehensive Emergency Response Plan - which is mandated by the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 as a public document. Another 20 percent provided only partial reports."

That's a majority of our government offices that broke the law by refusing to provide the public with what are specifically public documents.

This is news, but not new. In Illinois last October, the Better Government Association conducted a study to see how responsive government bodies were in complying with Freedom of Information Act requests from "ordinary citizens." Not very. Nearly two-thirds, 62 percent, failed to comply with the law.

"The results are appalling," says Jay Stewart, the group's executive director.

So what about higher profile requests? Drew Johnson, president and crusader-in-chief of the Tennessee Center for Public Policy, is certainly more high profile than your average citizen. But Johnson and TCPR aren't "legitimate" enough to get straight answers - or, for that matter, any answers - from the state's Department of Revenue.

A few months ago Johnson began asking for information concerning the state's somewhat bizarre Unauthorized Substance Tax. He has been completely stonewalled. And Nashville's City Paper found some interesting emails proving this was a concerted effort on the part of public officials in the department. As one of their office emails instructed, "We are not responding to the calls."

This past year, the Citizens in Charge Foundation, a group I work with, launched the Government Transparency and Accountability Project, which researched the degree to which government employees use taxpayer-financed resources to campaign for or against ballot measures.

Local researchers found numerous instances of illegal and unethical campaign activity conducted in government buildings by government employees on taxpayers' time and dime. And we discovered that tax-funded lobbying groups, like the Municipal League, bombarded government employees with emails that treated them as campaign workers on various ballot measures.

"Even more disturbing than the results alone was the level of resistance and outright hostility that greeted the ordinary citizen asking to see public records," says Leslie Graves, national director of the Government Transparency and Accountability Project.

Whose government is it? Ours. In theory. But as long as government workers close the doors to citizens seeking to know, it isn't ours. It's theirs. And that's not good.

Paul Jacob is the Senior Advisor at the Sam Adams Alliance.

©Casa Grande Valley Newspapers Inc. 2007