Did it feel a little brighter the past few days?
That’s because it’s Sunshine Week, a national initiative spearheaded by the American Society of News Editors to educate the public about the important of open government and the dangers of excessive and unnecessary government secrecy.
We don’t usually recognize special weeks or months dedicated to a cause. We feel that news is news regardless of when it happens. But we make an exception when it comes to Sunshine Week because shining a light on government is so important and often taken for granted.
We don’t need to look far to see that others don’t have the same access to government that we have. Canada and other nations do not have the guarantees to open government that we have. But Americans must remain vigilant in protecting those guarantees and our right to know what our government is doing and why.
U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Monday the administration has “made meaningful, measurable progress in improving the way our department — and its partners and counterparts — respond to disclosure requests.”
Justice Department officials released records requested through Freedom of Information Act either in full or in part 94.5 percent of the time, according to department figures
And yet, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan research group at Syracuse University and authors of The FOIA Project, a Web site tracking such requests, Justice Department lawyers “have become even more aggressive in defending anything that federal agencies choose to withhold.”
As a result, the department last month earned the seventh annual Rosemary Award, named for Pres. Richard M. Nixon’s secretary Rose Mary Woods, who erased 18 -1/ 2 minutes of a crucial Watergate tape.
The information is a double edged sword: In some governments, TRAC would not be able to provide this data, and at the same time we are disappointed by its conclusion.
Sunshine Week seeks to enlighten and empower people to play an active role in their government at all levels, and to give them access to information that makes their lives better and their communities stronger.
Happy Sunshine Week.
