Megan Rhyne: FOIA is not a partisan issue

Megan Rhyne
Rhyne is associate director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government.
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/154770

Earlier this month, the General Assembly passed legislation allowing the University of Virginia and Virginia State University to keep confidential much of the information related to donors to the schools' general fund. Though donors to public university foundations enjoy complete confidentiality, donations to UVa's and VSU's public operations have been accessible under the state Freedom of Information Act. Under the new law, except for the amount given, anonymous donations will stay completely confidential, thus eliminating any mechanism for overseeing any tie between donations and school policy, contracts or services.

Del. Glenn Oder, a Newport News Republican, sponsored the legislation on the House side, while Democratic Sen. Edd Houck carried the bill in the Senate. Both gentlemen were quite sympathetic to opposition arguments offered by the Virginia Press Association and the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, but ultimately the bills easily passed both houses.

The legislation proves that one's support of or opposition to open government principles has nothing to do with whether there is an R or a D next to one's name. FOIA is nonpartisan, an equal-opportunity pet cause or whipping boy, depending on the situation.

To open government advocates, it doesn't much matter whether people label themselves or each other as Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, liberals, moderates or anything else, so long as they agree that citizens should have easy access to the records and meetings the government undertakes in their behalf.

The current Bush administration has been harshly criticized by access advocates for many secretive moves: an executive order postponing the release of Ronald Reagan's presidential papers, which were scheduled to be released in 2001; Vice President Cheney's court battle to keep secret the names of his energy advisory panel; the current flap over improperly deleted White House e-mail.

Bush may be a bit more fond of secrecy than the past half-dozen presidents, but it is not because he pledges allegiance to the GOP. In 2000, Bill Clinton's administration was severely criticized in a special counsel report for keeping details about the raid on David Koresh's Waco compound under wraps and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was taken to court under Clinton's watch when it unilaterally decided it didn't need to comply with certain rules requiring its meetings to be held openly.

The same can be said at the state level: One of Charlie Crist's first initiatives as the Republican governor of Florida was to create an Office of Open Government to ensure compliance with state open government laws; on the other hand, the Republican governors of both Texas and Missouri have come under fire for withholding or deleting their e-mail.

Locally, where elected officials are not always identified by party, and employees rarely if ever are, the desire is the same: to shield information that might undermine a lucrative project, reveal misplaced spending priorities or damage one's reputation.

What is really at stake when those in government call for confidentiality is power: power in the form of knowledge; power in the form of dollars.

The bad news is that there are too many people in government who think that by withholding the records or holding meetings in private they can keep the public from knowing too much, from asking too many questions, from questioning how money is spent, from otherwise interfering. By keeping citizens in the dark, these government representatives often hope to hang on to their power or influence.

These are not Republicans or Democrats. These are Republicans and Democrats. These are individuals who do not understand that their power is derived from the citizens.

As in many hierarchical organizations, a culture of open government starts at the top. When a department head or manager embraces transparency, co-workers and subordinates will, too. On the flip side, when that same department head embraces a bunker mentality, so will the rest of the office: it's Us versus Them; we have the power and they don't.

The good news is that there are many more people in government who do get it. They seek out help from the FOI Advisory Council or the Virginia Coalition for Open Government when they have questions about how to use FOIA. When they exercise exemptions to withhold records or go into closed meetings, they do so only in the narrowest circumstances. They frequently waive charges for records when the number requested is small, or implement practices to ensure prompt and thorough responses to FOIA requests, and post their most frequently requested records online. They prominently advertise their meetings, hold them at convenient hours and broadcast them on the Web or local cable access channels.

It's hard in these days of deep divisions between parties and ideologies, but it is important during Sunshine Week to remember that the underlying issue is one of basic democracy -- giving the public the tools it needs to stay informed and involved in their government,

Open government is good government, no matter one's political stripes.