Greg Weaver

In Indiana, requests for judicial disclosure forms must be submitted through an online portal to the Office for Court Administration. And fulfilling those requests can take the office days or weeks.

Accepting gratuities from a vendor more than crosses that line and should be punished by law.

In my decades of reporting on or guiding coverage of the Indiana General Assembly, the reluctance by lawmakers to be more transparent or be subject to an outside ethics review board never changes, regardless of which party is in charge.

In both pending cases, let’s hope the state’s high court follows the preamble of the public access act, which calls for it to be liberally construed in favor of disclosure and reimbursement.

The Republican can set an example about the importance of transparency in government by protecting the role of the state’s public access counselor despite the Legislature’s moves to weaken the post.

The media also has a right and a responsibility to report on the proceedings while making a good-faith effort to follow the court’s rules.

The selection process for the Indiana Supreme Court is nothing like the political circus that surrounds the U.S. Supreme Court, and Hoosiers should want to keep it that way to maintain appellate courts that are as apolitical as possible.