A
guide to Open Government in Rhode Island
The Rhode Island
Attorney General’s Office held their 21st
Annual Open Government Session on July 19. The three hour session
sought to explain how the Open
Meetings Act (OMA) and
the Access to Public Records Act (APRA) work.
The Open Meetings Act
are the laws that govern the ways in which governmental meetings are noticed
and conducted, and the rights of the public when attending such meetings, under
the law.
The Access to Public Records Act are laws that govern how the public can access information normally not released by the government. ARA allows the public to see and review public documents for themselves.
Both Acts seek to put
checks on government power, and allow the public access into the decision
making process.
In his opening statements to those attending the Open Government Summit, said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha, set the bar for openness and transparency pretty high, with lofty rhetoric.
“You know this is the
21st Summit,” said Neronha. “It’s my first, so the only person who could
possibly screw it up is me. We’re all on the same team on this because
government transparency, government openness, builds confidence in what we do.
I’ve always felt like if there’s a decision that I make that I can’t explain or
defend, then maybe I shouldn’t be making that decision. I never, unless there’s
a really good reason, to protects someone’s safety or privacy, I want to make
my decisions public and I want to explain what they are.
“It’s why I almost never
turned down an inquiry from the press to go on and speak with them – not
because I love seeing my face on TV or get on the on radio, sometimes I don’t
sound like the smartest guy in the room – but I feel like I should be able to
explain what I did and the best person to be able to explain what I did is me.
“That’s my overarching
message to you – if you’re making the decisions, do them in sunlight. Be in a
position to explain and if you’re not there yet, if you’re not ready to explain
them, then you’re probably not ready to make them.
“These statutes are
complicated. When I took over as Attorney General in January one thing I knew
was that I didn’t understand these statutes in depth. The reality is I never had
to implement them previously,” continued Neronha. “When I was United States
Attorney we had a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] Unit
in Washington. If a request came it went down to DC and DC dealt with it.
“But I knew one thing. I
said this to my folks, that I didn’t want to die on a transparency hill. I knew
that over the course of my tenure that for year term, that they’re going to be
issues that came up where the decisions I made, I might be comfortable with
them but others would not be. And so those were the battles I knew I was going
to have to fight. To try to explain to people what I did why did it, but where
I didn’t want there to be a lack of confidence was how I was in handling
openness and transparency.
“What I’ve asked our
folks to do is to rethink every decision that we made in the past, to rethink
how we’ve done everything, from the way we write decisions (and that’s changed.
It’s been a subtle change but if you’ve read those decisions we’ve changed how
we write them.) but also to think about every fork in the road. Every fork in
the road that comes up when interpreting these statutes.
“Because there are some
things that are very clear as to what you can and what you can’t do. Then there
are things that are not so clear. There are times when you’re going to have to
exercise your discretion. I think that’s where the rubber meets the road. I
wanted my people to rethink every time, when answering our own request s, to
err on the side of openness, to think whether or not we should be withholding
information.
“It’s why we reversed course on the Google Documents. To me, there
was no reason to withhold those records at all, so we shouldn’t be withholding
them, and we certainly shouldn’t have been withholding them on a technicality.
As to whether something is a memorandum or not, that was the distinction, if a
document said memorandum on it then it could be withheld. The same information,
if memorandum wasn’t there, then it wouldn’t be withheld. To me that was a
distinction without a distinction. That was not a fork in the road that we
should choose to get down on the side of non transparency,” continued Neronha.
“Those are the kinds of
decisions that you have to make.I would encourage you to make them on the side
of transparency.
“You know, getting back
to the Google information, we put it in our annual report and that was not
by accident. Our annual report was issued around July 1. I wanted people to see
how we spent the money, and how my predecessor, Attorney General Peter Kilmartin spent the
money… I think he spent it well. I think he spent it in ways that serve the
public well…
“To me what it comes
down to is, you should ask the question that I used to ask when we’re talking
about cases we’re prosecuting. It’s the can we/should we question. Can we
charge this person with this crime, but should we charge this person? That
should always be a prosecutor’s question. It should always be the question in
this space. Can we withhold? The answer may be yes, but you have to ask the
next question, which is whether you should withhold.
“If I know I’m going to
turn it over eventually anyway on an APRA, why don’t I just turn it over
voluntarily? Why am I making it more difficult? Why am I shrouding something in
secrecy in the first instance, that’s going to come out anyway? Why am I
diminishing the confidence you need in the office that I can build by giving it
voluntarily? My advice to you is to turn over as much as you can, as
voluntarily as you can, and you will build confidence in you and the decisions
that you make,” concluded Neronha.
Steve Ahlquist is a frontline reporter in Rhode
Island. He has covered human rights, social justice, progressive politics and
environmental news for half a decade. Uprise RI is his new project, and he's
doing all he can to make it essential reading. atomicsteve@gmail.com