Sunshine Week: 9 key takeaways from our reporting on government transparency
Mar. 18—Editor's note: Every Sunday Josh Sweigart, editor of investigations and solutions journalism, brings you the top stories from the Dayton Daily News and major stories over the past week you may have missed. Go here to sign up to receive the Weekly Update newsletter and our Morning Briefing delivered to your inbox every morning.
The week of March 16 is Sunshine Week, when this news organizations and others across the nation raise awareness of Sunshine Laws. Sunshine Laws are protections for citizens to ensure government agencies are transparent about what is going on inside their offices. Journalists use the laws to request documents, track agency decisions and report stories.
Here are nine key takeaways from our reporting on public records laws:
1. The story: Reporter London Bishop and I reviewed the state of public records laws in Ohio to note how lawmakers and courts have chipped away at government transparency measures. Read the full story here.
2. Steps forward: Last October, an Ohio Supreme Court ruling opens up more public access to juvenile court records. Transparency advocates also note that member of the public now can challenge public record denials in the Ohio Court of Claims.
3. Steps back: A state law meant to protect crime victims is routinely used by police departments here and across Ohio to withhold from the public details of deadly officer-involved shootings.
4. Body cam: State lawmakers passed a measure — with no public notice or debate — to allow law enforcement agencies to charge up to hundreds of dollars for police body camera footage. Several local police departments say they plan to do so.
5. Coroner's records: Another place where transparency took one step forward and two steps back is access to county coroners' records. We used access to records like this in our investigation of the Takoda Collins tragedy, which led to changes in state law.
6. Unintended consequences: In April, a bill goes into effect that prohibits the public from accessing public employee timesheets. — The bill last year was amended to preserve journalists' access to the records after a Dayton Daily News report listing 11 examples of how public employee timesheet and payroll records have been used by this news outlet and others to investigate concerns such as public employees misreporting their time, working a second job while on the clock or taking excessive vacation time or overtime.
7. The quote: "There's been retrenchment," said Jack Greiner, an attorney and leading authority on Ohio Sunshine laws. "Ohio, for many years, has been very good about transparency and public records ... but some of these other developments have maybe unintended consequences."
8. Prior reporting: A Dayton Daily News investigation last Sunshine Week found nearly 30% of government agencies across our nine-county region were found out of compliance with Ohio public records and open meetings act laws in state audits in recent years.
9. Upcoming event: We are hosting a lunch-and-learn virtual panel discussion on Wednesday, March 19 as part of our Sunshine Week coverage. Our panelists (myself included) will talk through their experiences with records requests and answer questions you might have about the process.
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On this platform, people who have never prepped before describe loading up their SUVs at Costco, trying to anticipate what they most need in imagining a world with empty shelves. But for women like Sunshine, thinking about being prepared happened long before Trump took office for a second time — even if his reelection has also meant a marked increase in interest in her content. For the Black women who have been involved in prepping since before November 5, 2024, nothing about this moment feels surprising — it's literally what they have been preparing for. Sunshine is from Atlanta originally, and began making moves into prepping in the lead-up to the 2016 election between now-President Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 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