Celebrating open records

When a friend texted a picture of an alert from our local television station that said “Video: Coverage of Sunshine,” I laughed out loud. Then I went to see what the story was really about since I was fairly sure that the sun rising didn’t count for news (at least not yet). It’s Sunshine Week.

The first thing I found was the site for the week-long spotlight tagged “Open government is good government,” which is sponsored by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Bloomberg LP, American Society of New Editors, and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

There’s a brief history of the initiative’s purpose:

Sunshine Week is a national initiative to promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include news media, civic groups, libraries, nonprofits, schools and others interested in the public’s right to know.

In 2002, the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors started Sunshine Sunday after some of the state’s government officials tried to create exemptions to Florida’s public record laws. The idea spread after their efforts prevented nearly 300 exemptions to open government laws from going onto the books.

Though created by journalists, Sunshine Week is about the public’s right to know what its government is doing, and why.

Sunshine Week seeks to enlighten and empower people to play an active role in their government at all levels, and to give them access to information that makes their lives better and their communities stronger.

Participants include news media, government officials at all levels, schools and universities, libraries and archives, individuals, non-profit and civic organizations, historians and anyone with an interest in open government.

Everyone can be a part of Sunshine Week. Our coalition of supporters is broad and deep. And individual participation can make all the difference.

The only requirement is that you do something to engage in a discussion about the importance of open government. It could be a large public forum or a classroom discussion, an article or series of articles about access to important information, or an editorial.

There’s a tool kit for people interested in participating in the conversation, an impressive list of events across the country, and an idea bank of records to ask for or highlighting the use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

But my favorite part was reading through the stories created by asking for open records. Here are a few from the site.

Out of State Travels of Student Lender Prove Costly

Using Kentucky’s Open Records Act, the Lexington Herald-Leader discovered that the chief executive of two state agencies that lend money to college students had spent more than $50,000 on out-of-state trips, often exceeding the daily per diem limits and treating guests to $100-plus a person meals. Story

A Ton of Records on a $6.7 Million No-Bid Project

St. Louis Post Dispatch reporters filed public records requests to find out more about the environmental cleanup of a long-abandoned coke plant designed to make way for a new business park. The request generated 11,000 pages of records, which the reporters reviewed on site, rather than getting copies and likely prompting an environmental cleanup in the newsroom. The records search showed the $6.7 million project estimate was much too low, which officials knew at the time; that there was no public bidding; and that the original polluters paid only a fraction of the cleanup cost. Story

And Wait Until You Read How Much They Got in Bonuses

Using data gathered from a FOIA request, the Asbury Park Press reported that the federal government paid its civilian work force $105 billion in salaries in 2011 — then gave them another $439 million in bonuses. The database has been posted online. Story

It’s inspirational. My grad school fervor about the power of the media was rekindled. We often overlook the great stories in regional papers that bring about so much public good. It made me miss that heady feeling of being in the newsroom when you find something in a filing or just keep pushing until you break a story.

I thought about the late, great Mark Pittman, who had the nerve to sue the Federal Reserve and was such an inspiration to so many of us:

Pittman’s push to open the Fed to more scrutiny resulted in an Aug. 24 victory in Manhattan Federal Court affirming the public’s right to know about the central bank’s more than $2 trillion in assistance to financial firms. He drew the attention of filmmakers Leslie and Andrew Cockburn, who featured him prominently in their documentary about subprime mortgages, “American Casino,” which was shown at New York City’s Tribeca Film Festival in May.

 “Who sues the Fed? One reporter on the planet,” said Emma Moody, a Wall Street Journal editor who worked with Pittman at Bloomberg News. “The more complex the issue, the more he wanted to dig into it. Years ago, he forced us to learn what a credit- default swap was. He dragged us kicking and screaming.”

Then there was the story on my local TV station, a panel discussion talking about the football scandal at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

A panel discussion at 1:40 p.m. will include key parties involved in the lawsuit filed by local media against the University of North Carolina. Dick Baddour, former UNC director of athletics, and Jon Sasser, attorney for former UNC football coach Butch Davis, will join journalists and other lawyers to discuss the three-year legal battle over emails, phone records and parking tickets waged by those trying to report on allegations of athletic and academic improprieties.

Davis was fired and Baddour retired from UNC as scandal swirled that football players accepted gifts, trips and cash and were registered for classes that never met. The university, in a series of internal and external investigations, has said that the problems with changed grades and no-show classes were limited to one department and did not benefit student-athletes any more than other students.

It’s good to be reminded of why being a reporter is important and why fighting to protect open records is essential to holding government officials and others accountable. Go out and file a request – it’s an important and sometimes overlooked tool, especially in today’s fast-paced, commentary heavy news world.