Small Town News

Sun needs to shine at every offical level

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Summary: When it comes to transparency, the federal government could learn a lot from North Dakota.

Throughout the recent economic crisis across America, North Dakotans are often reminded of our relative luck.

An resurgent oil boom in the western part of the state coupled with a thriving and robust agricultural market has helped North Dakota side step many of the hard times being experienced elsewhere.

A general sensibility and the stereotypical Midwestern financial conservatism hasn't hurt either.

In line with that common sense is another great asset for our state. North Dakota has some of the strongest open records and meetings laws in America. These "sunshine laws" provide that all government records and meetings must be open to the public unless a specific statute authorizes a meeting or record to be closed.

In addition, all citizens are entitled to know how state and local government functions are performed and how public funds are spent.

One would think such concepts would be a common practice in government from the top down. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

One law cited in the quest for open records is the Freedom of Information Act. It's helped uncover a great deal of important information but, in today's federal government, agencies are ignoring legal deadlines and take months, even years, to respond to requests.

Agencies are supposed to answer requests within 20 business days, but they often take far longer. The Department of Homeland Security reported a backlog of 18,918 Freedom of Information Act requests at the end of 2009. The Justice Department had nearly 5,000.

Delays like this impedes the public's right to now about and better understand their government. In addition, such slow response times discourage people from looking for answers.

In North Dakota, government agencies must respond to requests within a reasonable time, either by providing the requested record or by explaining the legal authority for denying all or part of the request. Depending on the amount of records requested, a "reasonable" time could be a couple of hours or a few days, but not several days or weeks.

These rules have been supported by the N.D. Attorney General's Office enough times that state, county and city governments usually know better than to challenge them.

That could be the case once again on the federal level.

In a bi-partisan attempt to remedy these huge delays on Freedom of Information Act requests, Senators Patrick Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont, and John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, have introduced a bill that would push the bureaucracy to release information more quickly.

Senators Leahy and Cornyn introduced the Faster FOIA Act last week to coincide with Sunshine Week, which is dedicated to educating the public about the importance of government transparency. The bill would create a bipartisan commission to investigate the causes of delays in responding information requests, and make suggestions to Congress for speeding things up.

This is only the latest effort by Senators Leahy and Cornyn to strengthen the law. Their Open FOIA Act, which became law last fall, was aimed at fixing another problem: the use of overly broad interpretations of the act's exemptions to deny legitimate requests.

Good for Senators Leahy and Cornyn and good for American citizens.



Copyright 2010 Turtle Mountain Star, Rolla, North Dakota. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from SmallTownPapers, Inc.

© 2010 Turtle Mountain Star Rolla, North Dakota. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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