One of the ways to keep people ignorant is to control their access to information. Open any newspaper in the country, and you’ll see stories about how Muslim fundamentalist clerics and repressive dictators control their people by only allowing them access to the information deemed “appropriate” by extremely narrow standards.
Public access to information is one way of checking and balancing the power of those in government who work for us. Most U.S. states mandate that public offices fill requests for public information within three days or less, if not immediately. Not so in Mississippi, which seems to make dissemination of public information a profit center instead of the open book it should be.
This paper has long held that Mississippi’s public-records policies are punitive. Go to any clerk of court or any public office and ask for public records, and you will be told that it will cost you. Not only will you pay for the time it takes to find the information, but you’ll also pay for the time, toner and paper to copy it. And every office seems to base those costs on some antiquated system when every record was on a piece of paper filed in some mysterious room in the basement with unlabeled boxes and file cabinets.
Just this past week, the Mississippi Senate struck down a bill that would have reduced the time agencies supposedly have to provide requested information from an exorbitant 14 days to seven days. You should ask yourself why, in this “information” age, Mississippi legislators insist on maintaining such a lengthy and arbitrarily expensive process if they have nothing to hide.
The problem is that, even in Mississippi, citizens are supposed to have access to the records we own within 24 hours; the 14-day requirement is supposed to be the maximum for retrieving information that is actually stored off-site in some antiquated form. But public officials here routinely assume they can take the entire 14 days, hoping that the interest will wane, and the news cycle change, by the time the two weeks are up. Some media outlets have even gone along with this 13-day delay tactic, making it more difficult for all citizens to get information we deserve to have immediately. Such deals worsen the problem.
You have the right to review public information, whether that information consists of crime statistics, records of court proceedings or how your legislator voted on bills. It shouldn’t be up the governor, the secretary of state, a mayor or a city clerk to decide when to click the right combination of computer buttons or how much it will cost to get that information. Doing so smacks of the kind of information control our Constitution guards against.
We urge the Senate to reconsider their stand on public access to information. This is not something to fear and oppose. Like the right to vote, accurate, timely information empowers the people to make informed, rational decisions.
Previous Comments
Mississippi’s draconian freedom of information laws will never change without public outcry. Thank you JFP staff for leading the call.
#143901 | Author: bryan doyle | Date: Feb 23 2009
