Let the sun shine in

Unlike many other countries, the people are sovereign in America. The government’s elected leaders and institutional bureaucracy are employed by the people — and paid by the people — to do the people’s work.

Sometimes we all need to be reminded of that core constitutional principle. And we need to remind our elected, appointed and hired public servants at all levels — from Washington to our local villages — that they don’t own their jobs, nor do they own the information and processes they use to do those jobs.

Citizens have a right to an open government, and to the information their governments have, with the exception of legitimately classified national security secrets.

March 11-17 was Sunshine Week, an initiative to raise awareness of the importance of open government and freedom of information. But getting the sun to shine on federal, state, county, town, village and school government operations and decisions shouldn’t be our focus for just a week; it must be a constant effort. Those who have the power to decide on public matters will sometimes be defensive about their decisions, and may seek to control information to limit informed debate. But citizens — individually, through the media, or in civic organizations and nonprofits — have the right to know what their governments are doing and how they make their decisions.

In the spirit of greater transparency, President Obama issued an executive order in January 2009 instructing agencies of the federal government to “adopt a presumption in favor” of Freedom of Information Act requests. When Gov. Andrew Cuomo served as the state’s attorney general, he created Project Sunlight to promote open government and facilitate easy access to state government information.

As valuable as these initiatives are, many of the decisions that affect our day-to-day lives the most are made at the county, town, village and school-district levels, so it would be great to see our local leaders make such public declarations of their commitment to citizens’ right to know what they know and make it easy for the governed to get that information.

For more information on New York’s Project Sunlight, go to sunlightny.com. For information on the state’s Open Meetings Law and how to file Freedom of Information Law, or FOIL, requests, visit the Committee on Open Government website, dos.state.ny.us/coog.