Gov. Peter Shumlin and Legislative leaders said Friday they wanted to open government’s doors and allow more light to shine on what goes on within.
How wide open and how bright the light will be is not entirely clear. But from what was outlined Friday afternoon, Shumlin, Senate President John Campbell, House Speaker Shap Smith (in absentia, in Washington) and the relevant committee chairs do appear to be ready to open government’s doors wider and allow a brighter light to shine than did the previous administration, if not the previous two or three.
Under the plan announced yesterday, the state would:
–Begin training state officials “in open government,” as Shumlin put it, starting at next week’s cabinet meeting;
–Designate one official in the Secretary of State’s office to handle requests for public records, and “allow that official to make decisions and enforce those decisions” on transparency;
–Expand from 30 minutes to two hours the amount of time state or local officials would have to spend searching for records before they could charge the person or organization requesting the records;
–Change the law so that if a court ruled that the state or a locality had improperly withheld information, the state or locality would have to pay the plaintiff’s legal fees.
All but the first of those steps would require legislation.
That two-hour limit was still too short for the Vermont State Employees Association, which helped elevate the “open government” issue when it sought emails and other records about job cuts and state software monitoring employee Internet habits from the administration of former Gov. James Douglas, only to be told that it would have to fork over $1,300 to get the information.
The VSEA went to court, and won its case last week when Washington County Superior Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford ruled that providing access to public records was part of the cost of government and could not be imposed on the requesting parties.
While praising most of the Shumlin proposal, the VSEA’s web site said that because “it would be up to the Vermonter requesting the info to pay for (any time exceeding two hours), VSEA opposes this piece of today’s announcement.”
The governor’s announcement was not a direct response to Judge Crawford’s ruling. Shumlin’s counsel, Beth Robinson, said no decision had yet been made on a possible appeal of that decision.
But the governor and the lawmakers plainly were reacting to the increased salience of the transparency debate. During last year’s campaign, Shumlin several times pledged to run a more open government. As Shumlin mentioned, Secretary of State James Condos was not present Friday because he was with some 30 Vermont journalists discussing this very issue at a conference in Grafton. On Wednesday, the Burlington Free Press ran an unusually stern editorial urging Shumlin to accept Judge Crawford’s decision and live up to his own campaign statements.
As the VSEA said, allowing the state (or city, town, school district, etc.) to charge for record searches after two hours clearly creates a disincentive to seek a substantial amount of information. But administration officials said they were trying to avoid situations in which state workers were burdened by frivolous requests.
As an example, two senior administration officials, neither of whom wanted to be quoted, independently recounted the case of one person who asked for the names, positions, salaries, phone numbers, date of employment, projected date of retirement eligibility, and number of sick days “for every single state employee.”
It’s all pubic record, and the person was entitled to it, but it took 16 hours of work by state employees, who have other things to do.
Even with the two-hour rule, Friday’s proposals, if put into effect as outlined, are likely to make government in Vermont more open and transparent. Journalists would probably be able to get information now unavailable, perhaps providing knowledge and insight not only about how government works, but about public health, education, the environment, and economic activity, much of it monitored by state agencies.
Of course, that also means the journalists would have to work harder. Besides, making government more open and transparent does not always make it more lively. Often, when secrets are revealed, the results are neither scandalous nor even very interesting.
