March 17, 2017 at 3:33 p.m.
Read the grades in today's newspaper, and a reader will know just how somber our assessment is. Over the years, the number of bad grades has mushroomed, while the number of good grades has dwindled.
Officials who are advocates of open government may as well be prisoners in solitary confinement within the walls of big government.
And yet we remain optimistic, if wary, for a few reasons.
For one thing, the people. In 2015, in a sharp showdown between big-government Republicans and the people, the people - helped by the media - defeated an attempt by those Republicans to repeal the entire open-records law.
The second reason for our optimism, as a reading of our grades will also show, is local government. By far, with only a few exceptions, local officials are more accommodating of open records and open government than are state officials and federal officials.
It is a resounding ratification of that old saying, "The government closest to the people serves the people best." Historians still argue over who actually said that, but it doesn't really matter, local government officials, at least in our area, are proving it every day.
Of course, as the story in Thursay's edition made clear, there's a dark side to the people's victory over big-government darkness in 2015. Officials quickly realized that it was a mistake to try and take away openness and transparency in one fell swoop; it galvanized the people.
Now they are trying to kill open government a little at a time - death by a thousand cuts - an avenue of openness closed here, a swath of information hidden there, little acts they hope the people won't notice.
We must not let them get away with it. Sunshine Week 2017 must be a call to action for citizens to stay vigilant about the ever more pernicious attempts by big-government politicians of both parties to finally steal government completely for themselves.
There is a silver lining in all this: the possibility of uniting what is now a polarized nation, of bringing together those across the ideological spectrum for a unified fight for the core issue of openness.
These past few years have brought home to most the fact that neither Democrats nor Republicans are friends of transparency. Each side talks a good game, especially when they are out of power, but both are co-conspirators in the attack on open government.
Both sides have participated in the assault on online circuit court records, for example. Members of both sides are conspiring to end publication requirements for public notices.
And while the press is terrified of President Donald Trump, with a lot of justification, the AP did do its due diligence, as we reported Thursday, in summing up the Obama administration's dismal record on open records and open government.
The truth is, these assessments shine a light on an important fact: Big government Republicans and big government Democrats are two wings of the same big government, fighting each other for the perks of privilege and power, but the people's interests are cared for by neither.
It is in the people's interest, then, for all to unite in the cause of open government so that self-government and accountability can be preserved, and a true debate over policy issues can be restored and pursued.
As long as big-government politicians of either party control access to information, the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' are meaningless, for neither is possible in a world controlled by those who simply crave power and care little for policy.
It is also important these days to protect the integrity of the open-government issue and not allow it to become hostage to partisan politics itself, either by government officials or even those who claim to speak in the name of transparency.
They need to be watched, too.
Too often, one suspects, officials say they are protecting privacy when they are merely protecting secrecy, such as when a "conservative" state Supreme Court said it must yield to a federal regulation keeping immigration hold documents secret, or allowing Milwaukee County sheriff David Clarke to assert a new argument at the appellate level to protect the secrecy of those documents, an argument he did not make when he denied the records.
Was the court surrendering its own views of federal power and throwing precedent to the wind merely to make a political decision favoring Clarke's protection of documents related to immigrate detainees?
It certainly sounds like it.
These days, these officials behave as they do because they believe they have a free ride. People may vote on taxes or spending issues, they believe, but no one votes one way or another because of a candidate's position on open government.
Election results prove them mostly right.
And so what all this comes down to is, all citizens need to help build a unified movement for open government. Open government is the core issue we must all agree upon so that we may have a democratic platform to debate other differences.
Without open government, that platform is a cell with padded walls; we may debate all we want, but no one in power will ever hear.
And so, when it comes time to vote for governor, or senator, or Assembly representative, or judge, or town or county offices, or school board, we must first and foremost consider a candidate's position on open government and his or her record, if they have one.
That is the paramount need today. We are at a crossroads. Either we vote for open government candidates, or soon enough, no vote will count for anything.
It will be a dead end, crashing into the wall of big government.
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