Star Editorial
In celebration of National Sunshine Week, President and CEO of the Associated Press Gary Pruitt wrote about how “It’s getting harder and more expensive to use public records to hold government officials accountable. Authorities are undermining the laws that are supposed to guarantee a citizen’s right to information, turning the right to know into just plain ‘no’.” He goes on, of course, to bemoan the surging and often unreasonable costs involved in exercising those rights.
The grim picture he paints on the national scale holds true in Montana as well. As the cost of inquiry goes out the ceiling so does the cost of litigation. It becomes harder and harder to consider a legal challenge to even the most obvious and flagrant violations of the public’s right to know and to participate in its government.
Is it a problem locally? You bet.
If we put the question of the cost of copies aside (a major theme in Pruitt’s AP column), there is often a very significant cost involved in obtaining information that has nothing to do with copying. Making a request to the Human Rights Bureau for information contained in a Human Rights Complaint is a good example. It takes an attorney to go through the process in which your request is submitted and objections are solicited from every party involved. If there is an objection you go through a semi-judicial process involving briefs and counter briefs after which a decision is made. Even if you win the case, your attorney fees are not reimbursed. Take the case of Senn vs. Ravalli County. Cost to the Star for this successful inquiry? $1,800.
Then there is the cost of going into litigation. The recent case over (former) county treasurer Valerie Stamey’s records is a good example. In this case the Bitterroot Star ended up in litigation just by asking for information from the Missoula Public School District. Rather than provide the information, the school district sued the Bitterroot Star. As our attorney put it, we either defend our case or just shrug and walk away, leaving Stamey’s attorney to make unrebutted arguments.
First off, it’s interesting that the largest corporate news business operating in the county, Lee Enterprises, like the County Commissioners themselves, never even bothered to ask the school district anything about Stamey. Only the Bitterroot Star and two Missoula based news outlets made any request to the district despite the fact that her resume used in her appointment as Treasurer listed the school district as a recent employer.
Once we were sued, however, the other news media that were named in the case bowed out. Although one did cough up a few hundred dollars to cover its share of the filing fees and costs, other than that, they both declined to participate financially, leaving the Bitterroot Star to pursue the case and the appeal to the Montana Supreme Court. Cost of this inquiry? $10,473.
The handwriting is on the wall. When the news media can’t afford to get contested information, the watchdog of the government becomes all bark and no bite.
But if not the news media, then who? Who will stand up for the public’s right to know and insist on its right to participate in the government decision making process?
In general terms, it looks like the public itself will have to somehow pick up the bill. The fledgling answer to that call in Ravalli County is the Bitterroot Free Press Foundation, a standing legal fund dedicated solely to the public’s right to know and participate in government. The Bitterroot Star urges you to support this stand-alone organization dedicated simply to the public’s right to know. It’s the only chance on the horizon right now for the public itself to put a little bite back into its bark about freedom of information.
To learn more about the Bitterroot Free Press Foundation, plan to attend an informational meeting on Thursday, April 16 at 1 p.m. at the Bitterroot Public Library in Hamilton.