It's our government

An annual ritual begins today over which some in government prefer to cast shadows, that of newspapers spending seven days marking Sunshine Week, heralding open government and the public’s right to know. For those remotely interested in American liberty, this is the marrow beneath layers of thickening fat.

Increasingly, the former is composed of elements of the information evolution. This is an era when pundits of every stripe, armed with a keyboard and a blog site opine to a worldwide audience of head-nodders. John Adams said facts are stubborn, but he forgot to tell us how annoying the darned things can be. Some of the new information pioneers have found a solution, molding facts to their liking.

Crusty newspaper editors shake fists like grandpas chasing kids off the lawn. We insist newspapers do the hard work bloggers, blow-dried TV anchors and blowhard radio yappers do not, digging for facts, pestering government hacks, pulling out depth and substance to provide a vivid picture of things as they are.

One of the chief tools for doing this is the Freedom of Information Act, which Sunshine Week celebrates. It requires government in most cases to provide records of whatever the public demands. Want to know what that supervisors are saying to each other in e-mails? Ask and you should receive. How about details on a project that seems to cost more each time a elected official mentions it? File a FOIA.

Of course, some of our readers know precisely that of which we speak. We nominated Phil and Ellen Winter last month for the Sunshine Week Local Heroes Award. The Waynesboro couple sensed something wrong in the city Treasurer’s Office, requested and received dozens of pages in documents and found that the treasurer had been getting thumped in state audits. When word got out, the treasurer did, too, booted in the next election.

This is how representative democracy is supposed to work. It’s simply not enough to tap out beefs on a computer in the basement or bloviate for three hours on the radio. Opinions are dismissed like the body parts everybody has. Facts are indeed stubborn. They command attention.

Getting them from government, which year by year has the idea that it owns the people, is a sacred right the more of which we surrender the closer we edge to a rule of tyranny. As the Winters know, it’s not a right reserved for newspapers alone. It’s for the people, and an essential principle.

Government at every level in America answers to the people who elect its representatives and who fund its existence. It’s the business of all of us to watch every move government makes, to drag it out into the light and for government to feel the public’s eyes and the sunshine’s heat.

Presidential administrations, including Obama’s, acknowledge this, then forget it. We must insist on reminding him and others who’s in charge. The stubborn fact is, the government belongs to we the people. We have a right to know how it operates.