Every few years, it seems some folks wake up one morning and decide the real problem in Mississippi is that citizens know too much about what their government is doing.
This is one of those years.
The Mississippi Public Records and Open Meetings Acts are called our “Sunshine Laws” for good reason. They preserve the rights of citizens to know what their government is up to.
For whatever reason — often at the behest of other politicians or public agency officials — legislators will try to carve out exemptions to the acts. Presumably they do this in good faith, but it invariably ends up with the people elected to serve the citizens of our state being allowed to conduct more business in private.
It should go without saying, but the business of government is the people’s business.
With broad support, the Mississippi House of Representatives passed two bills last week that would close off many records related to bridge and roadway safety, as well as exempt large swaths of personally identifiable information from many documents.
More straightforward of the two measures, House Bill 1660 deals with roads and bridges. The obvious argument against exempting information of this sort is citizens have a right to know about safety conditions, what the responsible agencies know about deficiencies, and what steps are being taken to correct problems.
It seems not by coincidence the bill was filed after the Roy Howard Center for Community Journalism at the University of Southern Mississippi submitted a complaint with the Mississippi Ethics Commission claiming the state Department of Transportation was improperly refusing to turn over records about a bridge closure in Jackson County and about which the news outlet had been reporting.
Ethics filed an order on Jan. 22 ruling that MDOT should turn over the records. As of Friday, they had not. That’s two weeks after the deadline set by the Ethics Commission order.
Clearly, too many folks believe what’s in the records is none of our business.
Meanwhile, the bill was held Friday in the House on a motion to reconsider filed by Rep. Daryl Porter of Summit. Given its momentum thus far, it would not be surprising if it survives for Senate consideration.
The second measure, House Bill 1468, would close off more personally identifiable information from the Open Records Act.
Ostensibly intended to protect individual privacy, the broadly written bill goes too far and presents real concerns about transparency. Ill-defined exemptions often lead to public officials and agencies opting to refuse disclosure of entire documents rather than with legally allowed redactions.
The term “doxxing” came to the fore on the internet during the last decade as political and cultural divides resulted in more and more personal information being disclosed online in ever-escalating games of one-upmanship.
But mandating less transparency is no solution when it possibly leads to entire investigative files being withheld or reduced access to public records at large. Further, existing Freedom of Information laws at the state and federal level already block disclosure of information like Social Security numbers, bank account information, the identity of minors, and more. HIPPA exists to protect medical privacy for individuals.
Protecting personally identifiable information is important, but broadly written exemptions promote creeping government secrecy.
The bill was amended with a “reverse repealer” on passage from the House, meaning it will be forced into conference committee to work out issues legislators have with the bill. Let’s hope some of them are letting a desire for more transparency — not less — prevail.
We’ve fought these battles here in the past.
Police incident reports — which too often are incorrectly withheld when requested by the media or the public, were not clearly defined as public records until the late 2000s. Publicly owned hospitals were allowed to conduct their business behind closed doors until 2015 when it became obvious some were terribly managed and the public and employees revolted.
These sorts of issues are not really on the minds of the public until someone is affected by an issue that calls for access to records, like victims of crimes or those who have concerns about environmental safety.
But every citizen should care. It’s your business, after all. And you should let your elected representatives in the legislature know that.
The Public Records and Open Meetings Acts are meant to preserve every citizens' right to information. They’re not something to constantly whittle away until only the people who are hired to serve us are in the know.
Layne Bruce is executive director of the Mississippi Press Association. His email is lbruce@mspress.org.
