The irony is not lost on Tom Kelley, general counsel for the Colorado Press Association. And that's another irony, because government and law-enforcement officials have shown repeatedly that they will protect just about anybody before they defend the public's right to know what its government is doing and what citizens are paying to have it done. In the past year, for instance, the city of Denver refused to disclose which of its loans are in default. Apparently it is none of the public's business to know who still has the tax money, and who is expected to pay it back. The sheriff in San Miguel County refused to disclose who was in his jail, saying he needed to honor the prisoners' right to privacy.
Officials are most zealous when it comes to preserving their own secrecy.
In Indiana, legislators said it was important to protect their e-mail exchanges with constituents from discovery as public records. And in Denver again, the city stonewalled a request to examine Mayor Wellington Webb's travel expenses. Similar surveys in other states, where the requests were for such basic public documents as minutes from open meetings, officials' public votes, public officials' salaries and police incident reports, showed even less compliance. That was especially true in Connecticut, where state open-records laws were ignored 80 percent of the time. Lie about what is public and what the citizen has to do to see the documents.