In a report released this week for Sunshine Week, the Associated Press “found that fewer than a third of states have offices that can resolve residents’ complaints by forcing agencies to turn over documents or comply with open meetings requirements.”
Ohio is one of those states. If a resident or journalist requests a public record and the department or agency withholds it or drags its feet, our only recourse is to file a lawsuit. Footnotes referring to various court cases comprise over 30 pages — nearly ¼ — of the 2024 Sunshine Laws Manual that Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost released this week.
And it’s not as if Ohio sets a high bar for transparency. When an entity is found to be noncompliant with sunshine laws during a state audit, they get a big black X on Ohio Auditor of State Keith Faber’s StaRS site. In Athens County, at least, noncompliance doesn’t actually deprive the public of information. In these parts, noncompliance is officials who don’t complete required training on time, or fail to include their records policy in the employee handbook.
But those requirements are only the trappings of open government. What really matters is that records are kept and made available promptly; that the public knows when and where its officials meet; and that officials perform their work in the open. And our entities seem to do that.
That’s not to say that there’s no room for improvement. Multiple entities have never established policies for retaining and requesting records. The attorney general’s office has a model public records policy; it shouldn’t be all that hard to adapt it and check that box on the compliance list.
Some officials also could be better at producing records on request. The Independent sometimes wrangles with public bodies and officials who drag their feet in complying with records requests. Some requests have gone unanswered by local bodies for over a year, despite repeated reminders.
Some public officials undoubtedly avoid discussing issues by email or other channels that would be subject to records requests; several people have told us that one public body specifically directs staff to avoid communicating in the public record. You can’t get records that aren’t kept in the first place.
Enforcing the law shouldn’t be up to the public. The attorney general’s office can provide “guidance and non-legal advice” on sunshine laws, but Ohio needs a state agency that can adjudicate and enforce them. Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky and Massachusetts all have such structures, which makes it easier for the public to exercise its rights to know what government does in its name and with its tax dollars.
Our sunshine laws could use some updating, too. Make the required training for officials into a self-guided online course instead of a webinar so those who work full-time can more easily comply with the law. I’d also like to see Ohio require local governments to maintain an official website and set minimum standards for what should be posted there.
And no, posting information on social media doesn’t count. (Looking at you, Jeff Maiden!) Not everyone has or wants a social media account, and those who have accounts don’t necessarily check it daily. Maybe they use social media to keep up with family and friends and don’t want their feeds clogged with government announcements. And as news outlets have found, social media isn’t a reliable distribution channel. Your information is subject to the vagaries of the algorithm and the personal or political whims of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
It’s not enough to give lip service to transparency. “The public’s right to access such information is a cornerstone of our democracy,” Yost writes in the introduction to the 2024 Sunshine Laws Manual. But rights that aren’t enforced are rights denied, and on that score, Ohio has a ways to go.
