Laws governing public meetings, public records and open government emerged in the 1970s after the exposure of vast amounts of concealed government information and corruption — think Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. The idea was simple: government works better when the public can see how decisions are made.
You would think it strange to hand your hard-earned money over to an investment firm only to have them refuse to tell you how it was invested, what the profit margin was, or what caused any losses. Yet something similar often happens with our tax dollars, from the local level all the way up to the federal government.
Open meetings and open records laws are meant to prevent that. They ensure the public can review financial information, understand how decisions are made and attend the meetings where those decisions happen. In short, they are tools meant to promote transparency, accountability and trust.
At the hyperlocal level, it often falls to the local newspaper to point out suspected — or sometimes egregious — violations of those rules. Sometimes the problem is a new board that simply doesn’t understand the law. Sometimes it’s legal counsel failing to provide proper guidance. And sometimes, frankly, it’s just bad behavior.
Board members and elected officials understandably bristle when those issues are pointed out in print. But having a third party — the free press — paying attention is actually a protective benefit for those boards and officials.
Why? Because the primary recourse for citizens who believe open meetings or open records laws have been violated is to file a lawsuit. And in today’s litigious climate, citizens and attorneys are filing — and winning — those cases with increasing regularity.
Case in point: just last year the Colorado Supreme Court upheld a ruling requiring the Woodland Park School District to pay more than $144,000 in legal fees to a resident who proved the board violated the Colorado Open Meetings Law by hiding a discussion under “board housekeeping.” In 2023, the Douglas County School Board was ordered to pay $103,000 after holding closed-door meetings to discuss replacing the superintendent.
And those are just two recent examples.
Guess whose money ultimately pays those legal fees? The taxpayers.
That’s why Sunshine Week matters. Open government laws aren’t technicalities or bureaucratic red tape. They’re guardrails meant to protect the public’s right to know — and to protect public officials from costly mistakes. When decisions are made in the open, trust grows and problems can be addressed before they end up in court.
Because when transparency fails, the legal bills get added to the same account the public has been funding all along.
