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Mar

15

State governments don’t like sunshine laws? You don’t say!


You know, you’d think with how many of us have been writing about sunshine laws for how long now that the MSM could come up with a better headline than that – maybe a headline that focuses on the impact of state governments’ failure to show us what they’ve been keeping out of the sun.

We’ve got plenty of examples of Ohio state legislators refusing to handover e-mails and battline with each other over what must be turned over. Here’s the MSM’s latest contribution:

While e-mail and text messaging has become a hugely popular way to communicate throughout society, governments at all levels are often unwilling to let the public see the e-mails of their elected officials.

Officially, e-mails in all but a handful of states are treated like paper documents and subject to Freedom of Information requests. But most of these states have rules allowing them to choose which e-mails to turn over, and most decide on their own when e-mail records are deleted.

“There seems to be an attitude throughout government – at all levels – that somehow electronic communications are of its own kind and not subject to the laws in the way that print communications are,” said Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org.

“So we keep hearing reports of governors and mayors who decree that their e-mail records can be destroyed, in six weeks or six months, with no appraisal for permanent value and no review by an independent body,” she said.

Sounds like the idea of unitary executives is the primary trickle-down theory spreading courtesy of the Bush Administration (to wit, his refusal to sign bills that exclude retro-active immunity for telecoms that wiretapped without proper warrants or permissions).

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 3:16 pm March 15th, 2008 in Congress, Government, Law, Media, Politics, Statehouse 

Comments

4 Responses to “State governments don’t like sunshine laws? You don’t say!”

  1. 1 Why So Secretive? | Rowsey Blog on March 15th, 2008 10:51 pm

    [...] as often as possible is Jill Miller Zimon’s blog Writes Like She Talks.  She currently has a post discussing sunshine laws.  Perhaps if government entities were more transparent, there would be [...]

  2. 2 Oengus on March 16th, 2008 1:39 am

    Interesting… perhaps an email archive set up and then it could be monitored by a department of internal affairs…attorneys I would suggest, a process that insures that all communications are not in violation of the laws and codes of ethics.

    1) No emails can be deleted
    2) All emails are subject to scrutiny
    3) Some emails can be confidential if related to security and pending legal cases.

    This is interesting because it represent costs; efficiency would dictate a standard method and centralized authority. It would also have to be nonpartisan and independently administered. I would suggest a bigger initiative to actually review laws and insure that all laws are current and up to date, an initiative to standardize laws.

    Every municipality has a legal department, which is expensive, all legislation needs scrutiny and all communication as well. These legal departments review all decisions made they should be separate an autonomous, regionally centralized and politically unaffiliated.

    Think about the Pepper Pike sign ordinance, it should have passed though a legal scrutiny and held up for review as to its constitutionality. For that matter all relative communication as well, and a comparison to existing regional laws.

  3. 3 JAMES RUGGIERO on March 16th, 2008 8:56 am

    Whether Americans are aware of it (yet) we are living in police state.
    The government demands more information on us all the time they are quickly hiding their own doings. I liken it to a technological concentration camp.

  4. 4 Jill Miller Zimon on March 23rd, 2008 9:29 pm

    Thanks for the hattip Jason. Lots went on last week for Sunshine Week. A new project to check out is ChangeCongress.org.

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