Mike Moser "I Say" Published March 11, 2005

The sunshine in government is yours

I guess the question boils down to, "Whose business is it?"

The answer, despite often being misunderstood, is really quite simple: "It's yours and mine."

So what does Sunshine Sunday have to do with you? Everything. Because if you don't know how and why your local government and elected officials perform like they do, if you are only fed part of the information, if you are shut out of the decision making process, then you are ultimately left at the mercy of others whose actions you may or may not agree with.

Sunshine Sunday kicks off a week-long observance across the country titled "Sunshine Week: Your Right to Know."

Imagine walking into your local bank and asking to see your bank records to check on how much money you have on deposit and being told you can't see your bank statement.

That is what often happens when citizens walk in off the street and ask to see records that by law are public documents open to scrutiny on request during normal working hours.

In Cumberland County the media has in most cases enjoyed a good relationship with government offices and we find in most cases public servants very accommodating in meeting our requests.

Same can't be said for citizens who walk in off the street, and that highlights one of the biggest problems between citizens and public officials across the country.

Fact is, most public servants have never been trained or told how to react to requests for access to public records, don't know what is a public record and are reluctant to provide any information to the public without getting supervisor approval. Supervisors for reasons known only to them sometimes deny access, which is a crime.

The Tennessee Coalition for Open Government recently conducted an audit of 365 city and county offices all across Tennessee in an attempt to gauge the understanding of and compliance with public records.

Auditors included private citizens, students and reporters who volunteered their time and visited government offices located outside their hometowns. Cumberland County was included in this audit.

The results showed a 67 percent compliance rate which means one-third of the requests for public records were not met within 48 hours. Highest compliance was among planning agencies and the lowest compliance rate came from school systems.

Despite being on the books since 1957, auditors found that the biggest problem with obtaining records came from a basic misunderstanding of the law.

This should alarm all citizens because it is the public's business that access is being denied.

The Tennessean published an editorial about the issue, proclaiming, "Citizens of this state shouldn't have to beg to get access to public records. They shouldn't have to explain why they want access to the public record."

And we add that citizens should not be put off indefinitely because a clerk doesn't know what to do and has never been clearly told what to do in response to such requests.

It is true that open records assist reporters in doing their job. But the law is not written for journalists. It is written for all citizens and that is why this serious issue affects us all.

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Mike Moser is the editor of the Crossville Chronicle. His column is published periodically on Fridays.