Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Editorial: Government shadows lengthen dangerously
Americans should take time this week to reflect on the value of open government and consider the serious threats it faces.
From the RoundTable blog
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Americans possess tremendous tools to monitor their government, but it was not always so.
The Constitution says very little about the public's right to know what its government is doing. The spirit of open government is there, but the nation's fundamental document guarantees only a periodic journal of congressional proceedings and an accounting of federal receipts and expenditures.
Government owes the governed more.
Recognizing that debt, Congress 40 years ago passed the Freedom of Information Act, which codified the public's right to know. Practically overnight, ordinary Americans could demand official records and receive them.
Sunshine Week, this week, exists to remind Americans how lucky they are and how fragile the windows on government are.
Most years, Virginians need look no further than a recent session of the General Assembly to witness the erosion of open government. Lawmakers this year, however, abstained from efforts to increase secrecy.
Instead, the Virginia Coalition for Open Government celebrates its 10th anniversary; the Freedom of Information Advisory Council continues to do good work; and access to state data grows easier as more information migrates to the Internet. There is still room for improvement, but the commonwealth maintains some of the strongest open government laws in the nation.
No, the dangerous push for secrecy is taking place in Washington, where the scions of secrecy have forgone erosion in favor of a backhoe.
Since 1999, the federal government each year has classified more documents and declassified fewer. During the same period, the number of FOIA requests has more than doubled, but funding for processing them has barely increased, creating significant bureaucratic hurdles to obtaining information.
The current executive and congressional leadership's hostility to openness also manifests in direct attempts to cut the public out of the loop.
Reclassifying documents that were once public, easing reporting rules for polluters, stamping documents that cannot be classified "sensitive but unclassified" to keep them hidden, threatening journalists with prosecution for revealing unlawful wiretapping and other closed-door policies all reveal a preference for shadows to sunshine.
Some things must remain secret in the interest of national security, but a growing chasm lies between what the public should not know and what some elected officials do not want known.
This week, and all year, citizens should demand better. If America slips into the darkness at the bottom of the chasm, climbing out will not be easy.
