No excuses: Records should be public for all

Overly broad. Too vague. Trade secrets. Co-mingled with nonpublic information.

Because I don’t think you should have this.

These are among the flimsy reasons some public officials use to avoid giving public records to the public. Some of those are actual titles of exceptions to the Ohio public records laws, although they are used so liberally by some officials that it appears they have them on a rubber stamp.

The one about it being none of our business, which we have heard on more than one occasion, is laughable. For the record, the opinion of a paternalistic public official about whether we should be allowed to see a record is not an exception to the law.

This is “Sunshine Week,” when we can all celebrate our nation’s access laws and the transparency they bring. This week, we also call attention to the erosion of those laws by court decisions, legislative action or the unchallenged denials of access to public information.

The biggest impediments to access are those alleged public servants whose default answer to a records request is to simply say no. Most average taxpayers don’t have the legal training or the financial wherewithal to argue for access. So they go away empty-handed, not knowing how their money is being spent, how a public office conducts business or whether politicians truly kept their promises.

Ironically, some of those who profess transparency struggle to provide it. Such is the case with Ohio State University, where transparency is sometimes another word for opaque. You can read details of the university’s response to records requests on Page One today and decide for yourself what transparency looks like at the state’s largest public university.

Newspaper reporters seek access to public records on your behalf on a daily basis, but they are far from the only people asking to see them. People from all walks of life ask to see public records daily from all levels of government. They have every right to do so, because the records are records. They belong to the public, not the agency or individual custodian of the records.

Some officials don’t see it that way. Some are very protective of the records. Others are afraid of mistakenly releasing something that isn’t public — even though the Ohio Attorney General’s office provides a clear guide (www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/ yellowbook) and regular training for public officials. Some seem to fear repercussions from a boss who might not want public records containing embarrassing information to be released to the public.

Another irony in this legal realm is that some of the people responsible for upholding the law are among those who sometimes violate the public records laws. We routinely fight with sheriffs, police chiefs and prosecutors over access to the names of juveniles charged with serious offenses and the details surrounding those charges.

In Ohio, that information is a public record.

I was involved in one of those cases shortly after I became a reporter for The Dispatch in 1984. It involved two brothers in Coshocton County charged with killing their father. We won access to the records and the courtroom hearings, and the public was informed about youthful offenders in their midst.

To be clear: We’re not interested in publishing the names of juveniles charged with petty crimes that most of us would consider acts of youthful indiscretion. But we believe the public should know about those who are charged with serious crimes such as homicide, rape or aggravated assault — such as one in Fairfield County some years ago in which a teenager took a ball bat and beat a middle-aged man within an inch of his life.

The Dispatch is currently preparing to argue its case soon to the Ohio Supreme Court for access to autopsy reports in the slayings of eight people in Pike County nearly a year ago. These are public records. We have reviewed hundreds of autopsy reports across Ohio for various reasons in just the past few years. We do this not to publish lurid details but to verify the causes of death in homicides, to ensure accuracy of reporting about serious crimes, and to shed light on the circumstances and investigations of such cases.

And we believe that public officials in Pike County have improperly shielded these records. Therefore, we are involved in another legal battle against flimsy excuses and in favor of true transparency in government and law enforcement.