Illustration by Jamie Douglas
If only the Republicans were the true standard-bearers of the people’s right to know what their government is doing in their name and with their money.
If only the Democrats were the true standard-bearers of the people’s right to know what their government is doing in their name and with their money.
If only it were that easy.
As the director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, an organization fighting every day for the public’s right to know, my job would be so much simpler and more predictable if one political party or the other were a consistent and reliable voice for citizens seeking information and access to hold their government accountable.
If transparency were as central to a party’s platform as abortion, guns or a host of other line-in-the-sand issues, I could spend my time and energy bolstering that message, secure in the knowledge that that party had my back — and the public’s.
But it is not that easy. It isn’t now, it hasn’t been in the past, and it won’t be in the future.
Because you know who is the most vocal and supportive of the public’s right to ready access to the records and meetings of our local and state government agencies and officials? The people who can’t get them. The people who are not in power. The people who feel left out, marginalized, thwarted, unheard. The people who are trying to advocate, effect change and build alliances. The people who want to know why something is happening that directly impacts their lives, like the proposed development of a warehouse near their neighborhood or the use of public funds on services they use every day. They are the champions of the public’s right to know.
And who is more likely to resist easy access to government information? Those in power. From the governor — any governor — all the way down to the tiniest town — any town.
Knowledge is power. Information is knowledge. Therefore, information is power.
To let information loose to the public is to lose control of the message. So when ordinary citizens of all political and ideological walks of life use the Virginia Freedom of Information Act or other statutes as tools to peek behind the curtain, to know what those in power know, they are often met with resistance, regardless of whether those they ask have D’s or R’s next to their names.
Each year, I prowl the halls of the General Assembly, advocating on behalf of the public’s right to access information. And each year, someone from one party or the other will pull me aside to conspiratorially fret how the people in the other party operate in the shadows and support building obstacles to citizen access to information. They are as convinced that they are the true champions of sunshine in government as they are convinced that those on the other side champion opacity.
As an advocate, it would be easier to spend my time preaching the citizen’s right to know to members of one party as reliable votes and occasionally flipping outliers on the other side. Instead, I spend my time trying to convince every legislator — Republicans, Democrats, red, blue, urban, rural, old, young — that citizen access to information is critical to our democratic traditions. Citizens need the tools to gain knowledge that informs their daily lives, that holds their elected officials accountable and that monitors the way their taxes are spent. No matter the issue, no matter the beliefs or opinions about that issue, information is critical to the public’s understanding and consent in a representative democracy.
This year, all 140 seats in the General Assembly are up for grabs. Each candidate has an opportunity to make the citizen’s right to know a part of their campaign: Vote for me, and I will vote for you. I will push back on the many proposals that take more and more information behind closed doors and locked in file cabinets. I will vote in favor of proposals that make it easier for citizens to get, be and stay informed. I will look at proposals through the lens of all the people in my district, not through the lens of partisan politics. I will cross the aisle to empower the public. I will buck my party colleagues if voting with them would leave the people in the dark.
And then they actually need to do it once they take the oath of office. That’s not easy. But it should be.
Megan Rhyne is executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, a nonprofit founded in 1996 to advocate for public access to the records and meetings of Virginia’s local, regional and state governments and courts. Visit opengovva.org for more information.
