Transparent, open government is vital. That's why Sunshine Week still matters.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Sunshine Week celebrated nationally to promote the importance of open government at the federal, state and local levels.
The idea was born more than 20 years ago when Florida newspaper editors started Sunshine Sunday to highlight the need for government transparency. By 2005, it grew to a full week of open government advocacy nationwide.
The annual collaboration now is coordinated by the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications. This year's celebration is March 16-22.
About 100 organizations representing news media, public interest groups, and open government advocates have endorsed Sunshine Week. The Tennessee Coalition for Open Government (TCOG) and the Tennessee Press Association (TPA) are among those organizations.
TPA, which was founded more than 150 years ago to support the newspaper industry, played a key role in launching TCOG in 2003 because its leaders and open government advocates realized the public needed a unified voice to protect and strengthen open government laws.
As Jack McElroy, former editor of the Knoxville News Sentinel and a TCOG board member, wrote in his history of the organization, TCOG 'is recognized statewide, by citizens and public officials alike, as Tennessee's pre-eminent source of expertise and advocacy for the public's right to know.'
Sunshine Week celebrates its 20th anniversary at a time when efforts to weaken or circumvent open government laws are growing and public trust in the news media and traditional institutions has eroded. Two of Tennessee's top investigative journalists say more transparency, not less, is needed.
Marc Perrusquia heads The Institute for Public Service Reporting at the University of Memphis, which was created in 2018. He worked the previous 29 years as a reporter with The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, uncovering corruption in the state's taxpayer-funded child care system, excessive use of force by police, and consumer gouging by car title lenders, to name just a few.
"Transparency and freedom of information are under assault at every level of government, from Washington, where executive overreach is usurping legislative authority with little or no scrutiny by elected lawmakers, to Nashville, where the governor and state legislators have created a new immigration enforcement office that is exempt from the state public records law, to Memphis, where reporters often wait weeks, months and sometimes years to gain access to public records,' he said.
'Now, more than ever, we need a vigorous press to challenge these encroachments on democratic principles and their accompanying currents of disinformation. We need an engaged electorate, enlightened by readily flowing, reliable information that only a free and independent news media can provide.''
Phil Williams, an investigative reporter for WTVF-TV in Nashville, has spent much of his 40-year career uncovering corruption at the state and local level and confronting many of society's critical issues, including hate groups and conspiracy theory movements like QAnon.
'In an age when there is such intense distrust in government, transparency is the antidote that is desperately needed … I am increasingly finding that citizens are willing to embrace conspiracy theories about government that are completely divorced from reality,' Williams said.
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'The best hope for combating disinformation and misinformation is for government to be completely open about what it's doing and why.'
Tennessee is one of the few states where an open-government group has paid staff to educate the public and policymakers about their right to know, and research shows an active coalition is correlated with better government, said David Cuillier, director of the Brechner project, which coordinates Sunshine Week.
These organizations across the country struggle financially, Cuillier said. 'It's critical for community foundations and philanthropy to keep TCOG strong, because if Tennessee loses TCOG, it could very well lose government accountability,'
In recent years, TCOG has worked with lawmakers to:
Require city and county legislative bodies to produce accurate and complete public agendas at least 48 hours before any meeting.
Allow citizens to recover attorney costs in certain cases when they win an open meetings lawsuit.
Assure that future exceptions to the Public Records Act are fully scrutinized by requiring review by the House Government Operations Committee.
TCOG, like similar state public advocacy groups, is a nonprofit that receives no government funding and relies entirely on contributions from news organizations, citizen groups and individuals. TCOG's budget pays for one part-time employee.
With the General Assembly currently in full swing, that lone employee, TCOG executive director Deborah Fisher, is at the Capitol every week keeping tabs on legislation that could weaken open government laws and working to strengthen public transparency. During the year, Fisher fields scores of inquiries from journalists and citizens needing guidance and conducts training sessions for journalists and government officials alike about public record and open meeting laws.
It's important work that the public should support, said Frank Gibson, a former Tennessean editor who led the effort to create TCOG in 2003 and served as its executive director until 2011.
'Changes in the news media and political landscapes make it necessary for citizens to be better informed and aware of attempts to close information about their government,' Gibson said. 'Supporting groups like the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government is a good way keep the public informed and to protect freedom.'
Adam Yeomans is vice president of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government and the former South regional director for The Associated Press based in Nashville. He can be reached at adamyeomans@yahoo.com.
EDITOR'S NOTE: You can donate to TCOG and/or sign up for its free newsletter at https://tcog.info/ to receive updates about open government issues in Tennessee.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Government works best for citizens when it is transparent | Opinion
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