Public’s right to know

It seems lawmakers in Massachusetts aren’t in any particular rush to decide whether the Legislature, the governor’s office or the judiciary should be subject to the state’s public records law. A commission created in 2016 to study the issue was supposed to report back on its findings at the end of this month. But as The Boston Globe reported Friday, lawmakers have now given themselves another whole year to ponder the issue.

That means from the time they came up with the idea of a study commission — which was really just an excuse for not including the changes in a 2016 update to the public records law — until that commission issues its final report, a full 30 months will have passed. Perhaps they’re hoping people will have forgotten about it by then. We can assure them, we won’t forget.

As the Globe reported, in its first 18 months of existence the commission actually never met. Lawmakers were full of excuses for why that was so — changes in leadership, not enough time to organize, dog ate their homework, etc.

Of course the real reason is that lawmakers benefit from the current system, which shields much of their work from public scrutiny — and they’re completely disinterested in changing it.

We hope those lawmakers have noticed that, on a slew of subjects, the trend these days is

from secrecy.

See you all back here in a year.