If Gov. Bill Ritter wants to conduct state business without you knowing about it, he simply picks up his personal cellphone and dials.
And he does it all the time.
Ritter carries a state-issued phone, paid for by taxpayers, but only rarely uses it. Instead, he uses a second, private cellphone to conduct state business.
Who’s he calling? Maybe wind energy lobbyists, as he crafts an energy plan that would affect their industry? Maybe teachers union officials? Business leaders?
Who knows?
The governor has a right to his privacy, but we all have a right to know what government does in your name.
Ritter, of course, is in good company, which is why it’s worth rehashing all of this now as the Colorado Press Association launches its Open Government 2010 awareness campaign to educate citizens about open government and to urge them to hold public officials accountable when it comes to open meetings and records.
Public servants of all stripes pledge to be open and transparent and then find convenient ways to hide from public scrutiny. (Remember when President Obama pledged to hold all health care hearings out in the open, live on C-SPAN, only to close the doors and lock out the public as the most important details were hammered out?)
Elected leaders of both major parties promise transparency, but if the people aren’t watching, and demanding it, far too many revert back to the shadows where, let’s face it, it’s easier to operate.
Fortunately, we have the federal Freedom of Information Act and Colorado’s Sunshine Law and Open Records Act to prop open the doors of government and keep our politicians honest. They’re critical laws that allow citizens to see how their money is being spent and how our elected leaders act in our names.
Unfortunately, our open government laws often come under fire, as politicians try to chip away at those freedoms.
In 2008, state lawmakers considered a bill that would have modified Colorado’s open records laws to, among other things, make it easier to shield some lawmakers’ e-mails from public scrutiny. Fortunately, the bill died, but it’s important that the media and citizens remain vigilant if lawmakers press for future changes.
The Denver Post often fights for public access to government meetings and records, and has fought to see Ritter’s cellphone records — with his personal calls excised. But his office denied the requests, so the newspaper sued for access. The Post has so far been denied. Earlier this year, the Colorado Supreme Court agreed to review the paper’s legal appeal.
As we wrote in an editorial: “The message for those in government who want to operate in the shadows and escape oversight is to get a network of private cellphones and use them to conduct public business. . . . Unfortunately, there are many ways to abuse such a loophole — and yes, we think it’s a loophole that is contrary to the spirit of public records laws.”
We’ve been engaged in this little democracy experiment for 234 years now, and the one thing we know is that it works only if people have a stake in what their government is doing. And for that to happen, people need to be informed.
The more information people have, the more they can effect change — from the White House all the way down to the local water district board.
So while it may seem like open government and transparency laws benefit only nosy reporters trying to pry their way into meetings, it’s so much more than that.
It’s about you.
An informed citizenry, after all, is the very heart of our democracy.
Editorial page editor Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com. Follow him on Twitter at .
