Openness important
Here are reasons why
Comments (...)When the media begins talking about the need for openness and transparency in government, many members of the general public are often too quick to turn a deaf ear. Most can’t understand why open meetings, public notices and the free flow of information are important in general, let alone why any of it should matter to them.
There are several issues in the limelight at present – both in Illinois and across the country -- that may make the significance a bit more clear. The freedoms at issue in Illinois deal with such significant concerns that Josh Sharp, the director of government relations for the Illinois Press Association, has branded them “matters of profound concern.”
The Morris Daily Herald, as a media outlet that relies upon transparency in order to report and share legitimate news and that has a watchdog’s duty to ensure that openness is preserved and expanded, supports this and any legislation that will preserve the public’s right to know.
We specifically applaud Rep. Elaine Nekritz (D-Des Plaines) for proposing legislation that would remove from the present eavesdropping law some instances in which the recording of an individual without their knowledge or consent is a felony. Specifically, HB 3944 would exempt from an eavesdropping violation the recording of a peace officer who is performing a public duty in a public place and speaking at a volume audible to the unassisted human ear.
The legislation would also permit a non-employee to record a conversation if a corporation or other business entity announces it may record or listen to a telephone conversation with a non-employee.
Both are situations that members of the general public encounter every day, and in both cases, the current law limits their rights while, as Sharp points out, protecting people “who would harass or abuse others physically, emotionally or financially – such as telemarketers, debt collectors and scammers who lie or harass citizens, as well as police officers who exceed their authority.”
“Unfortunately, access typically gets shut down when a situation becomes controversial or combative,” Sharp notes. “That is exactly when the tape should be rolling.”
Presently, the courts in Illinois – specifically the 4th District Appellate Court – are also blocking the public’s right to access search warrants, this despite Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s published opinion from 2007 that search warrants should be open to public inspection once they are returned to the court.
“This ruling now prevents reporters from obtaining search warrant reports, which are used to determine why a search warrant was issued and what was found at the scene,” Sharp said. “This is a substantial accountability issue, leaving law enforcement with even less oversight on how it conducts its searches of private citizens.”
And, if anyone needs confirmation of why oversight and accountability for public servants and officials is necessary, they only need look so far as to the state of Mississippi, where the lack of proper publication of public notices enhanced and broadened the controversy over pardons issued by out-going Gov. Haley Barbour. Those pardons, which were issued without public notice requirements about them being fulfilled, resulted in a court halting the release of some prisoners and ordering the rounding up of others who had been freed by the governor’s order.
“More obscure to many – apparently even some officials and their throngs of legal advisers” points out Layne Bruce, the executive director of the Mississippi Press Association, “is Article 5, Section 124 of the Mississippi Constitution that succinctly requires proper advance public notice be made before a pardon request is granted by the governor.
“In the case of scads of pardons issued Jan. 10, that didn’t happen. Many public notices pertaining to cases in counties all over the state weren’t published in the proper local newspaper far enough in advance of the issuance of the pardons. Many more evidently didn’t run at all.”
Bruce properly points out that the lack of notices in these cases circumvented the public’s right to know about criminals being turned back onto the streets or regaining rights and freedoms. In some case, that included murderers who nearly regained the right to owns guns and molesters almost being excused from having to register as sex offenders.
“And when public notice laws are abused – either by mistake or on purpose – a serious right of citizens, taxpayers and voters is compromised,” Bruce said.
Yet, in Illinois, efforts have been under way to remove the requirement that public notices be placed in newspapers, instead offering that they would fulfill the same role simply be being published in some probably obscure location on the individual government website of each of the hundreds, if not thousands, of units of government that currently function in the state – assuming, that is, that they even have a website.
Proponents of such a change advocate, basically, circumventing the media and allowing governments the opportunity to be their own watchdogs. This, of course, despite the fact that – according to results of survey the Illinois Press Association conducted in March 2011 – 73.2 percent of households have some or very little confidence in their county government, and 84.2 percent have some or little confidence in their state government.
Conversely, 79.8 percent believe legal and public notices should remain in newspapers, 70.2 percent believe such notices keep elected officials more honest, 64.2 percent believe such notices make officials more careful about how they spend taxpayer money, and 72.2 percent think the notices provide information you would not get from other sources.
Without laws like the Open Meetings Act, the Freedom of Information Act and other measures that ensure government transparency and the public’s (and, therefore, the media’s) right to access documents, even newspapers and other media outlets would not be able to provide such important information.
And that is why such laws should matter … to everyone.
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