03/10/07

Sunshine Week 2007

Texas officials keeping public records secret, audit shows

By PAUL J. WEBER
Associated Press Writer

DALLAS (AP) -- Government officials in Texas are less forthcoming with public records than their counterparts in other states, according to an informal audit conducted by newspaper reporters.

In the audit, reporters around the country went to local government officials to obtain copies of their communities' emergency response plans, which Congress mandated must be available to the public.

The audits were organized by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which has declared Sunday through Saturday to be National Sunshine Week, focusing on "the importance of open government and freedom of information."

Of the nine emergency response plans Texas newspapers tried obtaining, requests for three were entirely denied. Another third of requests were only partially filled, and complete access was given to the remaining three requests.

Though not a statistical analysis -- the project mostly provided anecdotal snapshots of public record compliance -- Texas seemed less forthcoming than other states audited. Getting only 33 percent of its requests fully granted put Texas among the bottom third of states that audited at least eight agencies.

"I was disappointed and astounded that there are agencies in Texas that still don't know what the law is," said Wanda Garner Cash, a University of Texas at Austin journalism professor and past president of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. "It's just mind-boggling that these agencies ... that denied the request don't seem to understand that this information belongs to the people of Texas and not to them."

Texas participants included the Denton Record-Chronicle, The Monitor in McAllen, the Valley Morning Star in Harlingen, The Brownsville Herald and Abilene Reporter-News. The Austin American-Statesman, another participant, tried obtaining plans from two government offices.

The timing of the project seemed especially relevant in Texas, where state lawmakers have put increased scrutiny on emergency plans since absorbing an exodus of Hurricane Katrina evacuees in 2005 and the fatally flawed evacuation of the Houston area before Hurricane Rita.

Rita, in particular, forced counties to reconsider everything from busing sex offenders to quickly restoring power.

Public scrutiny of emergency plans would allow voters to evaluate their elected officials, Cash said.

"You should know the money they are getting from federal, state, and local taxes are being spent wisely and efficiently to maximize effective responses," Cash said. "It matters for citizens who deserve the accountability of how there money is being spent."

Officials have stressed educating the public so they know how to respond to a disaster, but efforts to review local emergency plans by several papers in Texas didn't always yield transparency.

In Abilene, reporter Patti Steele of the Reporter-News encountered few obstacles in getting a full copy of Taylor County's lengthy emergency response plan that officials there keep in a four-inch thick binder.

Never revealing she was a reporter, Steele satisfied Sheriff Jack Dieken by identifying herself as a "concerned citizen" when he insisted Steele divulge her name and why she wanted the plan. Steele said Dieken later joked to her that "we can't be giving this out to terrorists or anything like that."

The process was less easygoing for the Denton Record-Chronicle.

A two-week wait and several follow-up calls ended with the North Texas paper obtaining only a portion of Denton County's plan. Missing materials included the county's hazard mitigation and terrorist incident response plans. Officials at the county fire department even asked the paper to clarify its request after characterizing one document as "unmanageable."

The law allows officials to decline releasing sensitive portions of emergency response plans, but many open government advocates say authorities have gone too far.

"Local governments have been scared into being secretive in a post 9-11 world," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "They are closing off records without thought, when many records are supposed to be public."
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Associated Press Writer Jeff Carlton contributed to this report.