Let the sun shine in

Sunshine Week wrapped up March 19, and you may have been reading some of the great stories  done by reporters across the country to highlight the annual event. Sunshine Week has its roots in efforts begun in 2002 by a group of Florida editors seeking to call attention to a planned rollback of that state’s public records laws. It has since evolved into an annual nationwide observance of the importance of open government and public access to information.

At WyoFile, we work year-round to hold public officials accountable, to make government operations transparent and to make available the public records you own. We’ve begun using state-of-the-art online tools to help present public documents, and we regularly work for access to meetings and records that are supposed to be open and available, but all too often are not.

So with Sunshine Week 2012 only 51 weeks away, it’s time to get working on some ideas for next year! We want to hear from Wyoming residents about access to public records in your communities.

Are there state, federal or local public officials who aren’t following the law and providing you with the documents you’ve requested? Do you have a great public document you’d like to share? Do you have a story about how access to public records helped you or others in your community tackle a tough public policy issue? Are there records not available under the law that you’d like to see opened for review?

Send your public records story pitches, gripes, concerns and personal stories to editor@wyofile.com, and maybe we’ll make one of them the focus of a feature story for Sunshine Week next year — if not sooner.

— Ruffin Prevost, WyoFile managing editor