An excerpt from The Columbia Missourian about 2021 Sunshine Week, "A celebration of openness [that] has special urgency."
"A year ago this week, the world was descending into the throes of the COVID-19 crisis. It's fitting that our year of darkness appears to be ending as Sunshine Week 2021 gets underway.
"This annual celebration of openness in government, created by the news publishers who often lead the fight for it, has special resonance this year. It also has special urgency.
"Among the most valuable lessons we've learned in the last year is that our democracy is a fragile thing. It can only survive with watchful care from all citizens and, yes, sunshine.
"Think access to government information makes no difference to you? Think of the families of those living in long-term care facilities across the state. When the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, these Missourians immediately realized they and their loved ones had a personal stake in knowing what the government knew about the outbreak. Missouri health officials' refusal to release detailed data forced some academic researchers and journalists to try to close the information gap.
"A year of social distancing — not to mention political derriere-covering — led some government agencies to begin shutting doors that had been open to the public. We need to fight to open them again. Masking may be the right move for people in a pandemic, but not for the public's information."
[Slow walking open records requests and democracy by video became the norm. In this environment, bitter lessons were learned.]
"The Missouri Sunshine Coalition recently signed a letter supporting our sister organization in Kentucky in a fight to stop a brazen move by that state's lawmakers to gut their Sunshine Law. The effort got underway in tellingly sneaky fashion when lawmakers in a committee deleted the text of a one-page "act relating to financial institutions" and replaced it with a 23-page bill that puts draconian limits on how much information the public can get under Kentucky's open records act. To borrow the terminology in popular currency these days, we have to stop this virus before it replicates.
"'This is what citizens and voters hate about politics,' veteran news columnist Al Cross quoted Kentucky lawmaker Mary Lou Marzian saying of the efforts to gut the open records law in her state. 'Why would we have a change in our system of open public records when we didn't have something to hide?'
"If 2020 taught us anything, it is the dangers that can be unleashed when Americans feel they lose ownership of their government. Rather than using the pandemic as an excuse to retreat from open records and open meetings commitments, law and policy makers ought to be doubling down on an effort to increase trust in democracy. That's what the Missouri Sunshine Coalition plans to be doing in the coming year. We hope you will join us."
The Kentucky Open Government Coalition is grateful for the Missouri Sunshine Coalition's support and will join the Coalition in "doubling down on an effort to increase trust in democracy" during Sunshine Week 2021 and throughout the year.
Read more here:
https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.columbiamissouria…
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Kathy Kiely is the Lee Hills Chair in Free Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism. She also is on the board of the Missouri Sunshine Coalition, a nonprofit partnership of businesses, news media, government officials and citizens who advocate for open meetings and open records. The group has offices in Columbia.
