OUR TURN: Sunshine Week shines a light on open government

As the week comes to a close, please take some time to pause and reflect on Sunshine Week, which runs March 11-17.

Billed as “Sunshine Week: Your Right to Know,” the annual campaign urges residents to continue supporting efforts to keep government open and accountable. Sunshine Week is part of a national initiative to encourage a dialogue about the importance of  transparent government and freedom of information.

The Sunshine Laws — which include legislation guaranteeing that government documents and meetings are open to the public, as well as the Freedom of Information Act — ensure that the people’s business is conducted in front of the people, not behind closed doors.

Though many of us might take this for granted today, such transparency wasn’t always so. Many groups had to fight hard to make sure government is and continues to be open and accountable.

Without an informed electorate, the powerbrokers and lawmakers could have free rein, making deals, passing laws and collecting information without the public’s knowledge.

That’s not a democracy. That’s called a dictatorship.

It’s no wonder groups as diverse as the Texas Press Association to the American Library Association support Sunshine Laws.

That’s not to say that all government officials want to keep the populace in the dark. After all, it was President Lyndon B. Johnson, born and raised right here in the Hill Country, who signed the Freedom of Information Act 45 years ago.

But power tends to corrupt, as the old adage goes, and Sunshine Laws help keep the light shining on what the government is doing.

Thanks to open records laws, any of us — not just the media — can get copies of police reports, pull tax and campaign finance records, have access to criminal jurisprudence and court workings and ensure that our elected leaders and their staffs are conducting business under the watchful eyes of the public.

Thanks to Sunshine Laws, we also learn about threats to our health and safety, the results of public inspections — from the soundness of a bridge to why a military toilet seat costs $600; and even how government and quasi-government officials spend our money when they leave town.

The Freedom of Information Act, for example, has allowed this newspaper to keep its readers informed about topics ranging from how former Pedernales Electric Cooperative officials spent money on lavish trips to probes into custodial deaths involving police and jails.

The Sunshine Laws also force government to explain why sometimes withholding information outweighs the value of not disclosing it to the public.

New challenges arise every day to open-records laws, from legal issues involving national security and cyberspace to lawsuits attempting to limit access to government documents or relax requirements for what constitutes a quorum.

All of us have to maintain our vigilance, to remain watchdogs about how the government spends our tax dollars and carries out its business. Holding the government accountable and keeping policy workings transparent are part of a constant battle.

Thanks to the Sunshine Laws, the public’s right to know remains a cornerstone of democracy. But these freedoms we enjoy should never be taken lightly.

Without them, we would remain in the dark.