When Interstate 64 came to my hometown, I was too young to appreciate what an amazing engineering feat it was. To me, the construction zone was a wonderland of big trucks and other exotic-looking equipment.
Read MoreThe election is over, but there are still some unanswered questions as we clean up the toxic debris from the campaigns and get back to focusing on other things.
Read MoreIn Monroe County, the League of Women Voters has been having trouble with its candidate forums for local and state races. Some of the candidates refuse to take part.
The Indiana Coalition for Open Government was putting together such a list for the gubernatorial candidates as I wrote this column. While I played a small role in that effort, I would also like to ask a few questions of Mike Pence and John Gregg that are not on the list:
I was hesitant to weigh in on the Chick-fil-A controversy, but I decided not doing so would be chicken. (Sorry—couldn’t resist.)
The goal will be to divide and conquer on election day.
We trailed, believe it or not, Illinois and Louisiana, among others.
The Ukrainians were particularly curious about the national security exemption in our Freedom of Information Act.
Anonymous speech has a long history in the United States.
The only way to enforce the law if a public official ignores a public access counselor’s opinion in your favor is to sue.
Telling the average person that she’s welcome to sue is like telling her to go to Mars and back.
The right of access to information is like a muscle—if you don’t exercise it, it atrophies.
The nation with the top score was Serbia, followed by Slovenia, India, El Salvador, Liberia, Croatia and Mexico.
Anonymity on creates challenges, but it also creates opportunities for the marginalized, the rebellious and the tremulous to speak their minds.
Hoage is correct that his office shouldn’t be advising agencies on how to comply with the law, educating them, and also fining them when they misbehave.
It might take a big chunk of the 21st century for the state to catch up to the 21st century.
There are slippery slopes, camels’ noses under tents, etc., that we fear will become too common if we budge on our opposition to secrecy. But secretly (oops), we also know that government has to keep some things quiet to keep us safe.
The Internet has changed our expectations about the availability of information. We now expect information to be at our fingertips when we want it.
It is difficult to sell the benefits of democracy to your citizens or the stability of your government to foreign investors if too much information is kept hidden.
Are they politically motivated? Probably. Do they have the potential to intimidate professors and institutions? Yes. Are they illegal or unethical? No.
Unfortunately, journalists still sometimes fall into the trap of accepting what “everybody knows” without doing enough questioning.
Transparency walks hand in hand with accountability. It is hard to trust what you cannot see.
