Sunday, March14, marks the start of National Sunshine Week, a non-partisan initiative led by the American Society of Newspaper Editors to encourage discussion about the importance of open government and freedom of information in our democracy.

Sunshine Week is about the public's right to know what its government is doing. There seems to be  a common conception that open government and freedom of information are issues for journalists, and they certainly are important to what we do, but in fact, these issues are vital for all of us in a free society. There are far more FOIA requests from individuals and commercial interests at the federal and state levels than there are from journalists.

There seems to be a natural tendency for government at all levels to operate in secrecy, but at the same time citizens need to know what's going on to hold government accountable. Freedom of information laws at the state and federal levels and open meetings laws at the state level exist to ensure that government is open while at the same time providing exceptions that serve various needs such as protecting the privacy of individuals. At least that's the theory. In practice, the strength of access laws varies widely among the states and even in the federal government between administrations.

Until this year, the Illinois Freedom of Information Act was one of the weakest in the country, filled with exemptions and lacking teeth to force governments to comply. But last year, the Legislature amended the FOIA and strengthened it considerably. The changes took effect Jan. 1, but almost immediately,  the Legislature began repealing or modifying parts of the new FOIA law, passing a bill to protect the performance evaluations of teachers. Other bills are on the docket to protect performance evaluations of other public employees and modify fee schedules for filling FOIA requests.

We have some things planned to mark the week both in the paper and on our Web site. Look for a story in Sunday's News-Gazette by Online Editor Mike Howie about the effect of the  state's new FOIA on local governments. On the Web Sunday, we'll launch a FOIA resource page that can help you get access to records. We'll have links to government bodies' sites, ways to get the text of the law, the lists of requests at the University of Illinois and more.

For now, here are some links if you're interested in more information about the federal FOIA law and the state FOIA law and Open Meetings Act.

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