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By Deborah Fisher, Executive Director of Tennessee Coalition for Open Government [via The Tennessee Lookout] –
An often quoted phrase related to open government is one by Louis Brandeis, an attorney and associate justice on the Supreme Court whose work and writings spanned the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric lights the most efficient policemen,” Brandeis wrote in a Harper’s Weekly article in 1913, one of his many writings on the topic.
Brandeis (1856-1941) believed that “sunlight” on government activities could expose wrongdoing, corruption and inefficiency. It could bring cronyism to light and equip citizens to fight against misgovernment and thereby, protect their liberty.
The issues were concrete for Brandeis, whose focus at hand was corruption in Boston and in Massachusetts in general, particularly by public officers who were obtaining contracts to enrich themselves or their friends.
He believed that newspapers of the day should use their power of publicity to expose the inner workings of government, particularly such actions that, if revealed, would expose wrongdoers who were trying to pass themselves off as “honest men.”
“…there should be a further call upon publicity for service. That potent force must, in the impending struggle, be utilized in many ways as a continuous remedial measure,” Brandeis wrote in the 1913 article.
More than 100 years later, these words calling for “sunlight” on government activities still define a citizen’s best agency in protecting himself against an overreaching or corrupt government or government official, such as those who have become beholden to special interests.
Access to information is key. Access to government records, especially financial records, and access to meetings of both local and state governing bodies where decisions are discussed and made.
In Tennessee, the Public Records Act and Open Meetings Act codify the right of citizens to have sunlight in all corners of government. Passed in 1957 and 1974 respectively, these laws have been critical in allowing citizens and the press to access government information and keep the “electric lights” on.
Unfortunately, each year in Tennessee, bills are proposed — and some are passed — to allow certain government agencies to work in darkness.
This year, for example, the state Department of Tourist Development is pushing a bill that would allow it to keep confidential for as many as 10 years any record of the department that its commissioner determines is “of such a sensitive nature that its disclosure would adversely impact the department’s ability to carry out its statutory functions.”
This broad, subjective and vague exemption could include financial records and records related to contracts or agreements. The tourism commissioner, Mark Ezell, has noted that the department has a new $25 million “mega-event” fund that can be used for events such as bringing the Super Bowl to Nashville.
But citizens should rightly ask: Why should state records related to funds spent toward convincing the National Football League to choose Nashville as a Super Bowl site be secret? In fact, why should any financial records of the department be secret?
Corruption and cronyism need darkness to survive. Protecting the right of citizens and the press to shine light on government means we need to protect against laws that would shut this right down.
About the Author: Deborah Fisher is executive director of Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, an organization that has monitored and researched open government in Tennessee since 2003.