Burnt Orange Report

Sunshine Week!

By Vince Leibowitz

[This post has been updated. Click on the "Read More" link for the update]

Happy Sunshine Week!

For those of you who don't know, Sunshine Week is the week where Texans (especially those who write for newspapers) celebrate and educate others about "sunshine" (aka open government) laws in the state.

In Texas, there are two main open government laws: The Texas Public Information Act and the Texas Open Meetings Act.

For those of you unaware how open government laws came into existance in Texas, the Longview News-Journal (via Cox News Service) has a great article that traces it back to the days of the Sharpstown Scandal.

As someone who has used both the Texas Public Information Act and the Texas Open Meetings Act to help gather news and information for my readers back when I was in print media, I can tell you that our state truly has some of the best Sunshine Laws in existance. But, they always need tweaking.

I can't count the times I've seen government bodies try to get the Texas Attorney General's Office to allow them to withold records they should have released to begin with, or that I've seen government bodies try to violate (or actually violate) the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act.

I have vivid memories of an instance where a city in Van Zandt County refused to say anything or release any documents that would reveal why its City Secretary had resigned or been fired--at the time, we didn't know which. We believed it had something to do with financial mismanagement (it did), and ended up requesting to see so many documents they literally filled the city's small council chamber which was, at that time, a long board-room type table in a long, narrow room. Finally, as we were going through this massive mountain of documents, the Mayor came in and said, "Look, here's the deal..." and we got the story and the letter of resignation, which we'd requested to begin with but were told didn't exist (yeah, right).

In particular, I'm especially proud of one achievement for which I recieved a shiny glass award from the Texas Press Association and Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. One of the things I was cited for was securing a favorable decision from the AG's Open Records Committee regarding the release of documents containing rejected or unadopted settlement offers in lawsuits against government bodies.

I think, over the years, as a reporter or private citizen, I've filed at least 200 open records requests with government bodies.

But, what I've always wondered is why more Bloggers don't get in on the act? There are a lot of "speculative" stories we write which could be bolstered with documents we could obtain under the Texas Public Information Act. I guess that, given the "immediate" nature of our medium, waiting 10 days for documents and possibly another sixty for an AG's decision is a little too long a wait.

At any rate, it's Sunshine Week! So, let's all work to "Let The Sun Shine In"!

UPDATE:

There is a blogger version of Sunshine Sunday and Sunshine Week, too. It's called BlogShine. Check it out.

In addition, in the spirit of shining the light, I wanted to post two links that can help you figure out how your state senators and state reps voted on various pieces of legislation and amendments, etc. The House Journal and Senate Journal are both online. They can be searched by specific bill number. Or, you can go to the date od a specific vote and just scroll through. I highly reccomend using the HTML versions as opposed to the PDF.