Let in Some Sun

Sunshine Week, an initiative sponsored by the News Leaders Association and the Society of Professional Journalists, took place last week. Created in 2005, it promotes government transparency and educates the public about the tools and methods they can use to shine a light in the dark corners that lawmaking bodies and government agencies don’t want you to see.

All 50 states have some kind of sunshine law, with varying degrees of efficacy. In New York, we have the Open Meetings Law and the Freedom of Information Law. The former mandates that public bodies, from school boards and land use boards all the way to the State Legislature, conduct their business — the public’s business — in public. The latter grants access to government records, everything from formal reports to emails and text messages sent and received by public officials.

There are exceptions to both of these laws, and, unfortunately, sometimes the holes feel big enough to drive through. But when elected and appointed officials and government employees adhere to these laws in both letter and spirit, they act as partners in keeping government accountable to the voters and taxpayers.

Too often, officials and bureaucrats flout the Open Meetings Law and FOIL, interpreting the public’s right to know as narrowly as they can, while driving double-decker buses through the exceptions that these laws include to respect things like personal privacy and the confidentially of negotiations, hiring and criminal investigations.

Politicians routinely campaign on bringing transparency, ethics and efficiency to elected posts, but once seated, these aspirations go out the window when it comes to fulfilling meritorious Freedom of Information requests and holding discussions in public view. Instead of erring on the side of transparency, they hold the public’s information close to the vest and deliberate behind closed doors.

Under the law, whenever a quorum, or a majority, of a public body gets together — physically, via phone or virtually — that constitutes a meeting. And as New York’s Committee on Open Government has reiterated again and again, “There is no legal distinction between an ‘informal’ meeting, an ‘unofficial’ meeting, a work session or a regular meeting.” As much as board members may strain to find an excuse for why a certain meeting or a portion of a meeting doesn’t count under the law, it does.

In light of the pandemic lockdown, the State Legislature updated the Open Meetings Law in 2022 and included a provision, set to expire on July 1, 2024, that states that any meeting conducted via videoconferencing — this includes hybrid meetings — must be recorded, and those recordings must be posted on the public body’s website within five business days and remain available for five years. But whether it’s mandatory or not, all boards and committees should willingly choose to record their meetings and make the videos easy to find. If they don’t agree with that level of government transparency, then government service is not for them.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and no one who continues to serve in government should fear it.