The surest way for government to separate itself from the citizenry is to keep them in the dark about what elected officials are doing...supposedly on the citizens’ behalf.
The Wyoming Public Records Act (WPRA) was enacted to facilitate citizens’ knowledge about their government’s actions, and to rip asunder the veil of secrecy behind which government all too often hides.
I have written a trio of columns regarding the WPRA celebrating its successes and bitching about its failures.
Rod Miller: Schroeder And Inner Circle Broke The Law Besides Looking Like Nincompoops
Rod Miller: Government Secrets vs. The Wyoming Public Records Act
Rod Miller: The Wyoming Public Records Act At Work
But I have never, myself, requested any information from government under the act. My youngest son, Vic, himself a government transparency and First Amendment pit bull, challenged me to put a little skin in the game and file a request under WPRA.
Vic related that, in order to request public information from the City of Cheyenne, one must first make that request through some sort of “portal” or gateway into the innards of city government that required a whole bunch of personal information before the request would be considered.
Since both Vic and I firmly believe that we should know more about government than it knows about us, we smelled a rat.
So I fired off a request under WPRA to the designated public records person for our little city on the piedmont, to wit: “ I am formally requesting from you any and all correspondence, including digital correspondence, from the City Attorney to other agencies of the City of Cheyenne regarding handling of public records requests.”
To their credit, the City of Cheyenne responded promptly, but denied my request because the information I sought was protected by the attorney/client privilege.
That got me to scratchin’ my noggin, and when I get confused I always turn to the Constitution of the State of Wyoming. The very first words in our Constitution are: “All power is inherent in the people and all free governments are founded on their authority…”
If a city attorney - authorized and paid by the citizens - can keep secret from those citizens their legal advice to a city in Wyoming – a city authorized and funded by the citizens - that secrecy violates the very first principle of government that our Constitution laid out.
If a city government and that city’s legal counsel consider government to be the client in the attorney/client privilege, they should read the Wyoming Constitution again and pay more attention this time.
We, the citizens of the Cowboy State ARE the government of Wyoming. We are the client.
And when elected officials start building barriers of secrecy between us and lawyers hired to do our legal work, then we should start asking questions that make both lawyers and those holding election certificates uncomfortable as hell.
And, when government responds to those questions by saying “that’s a secret," we need to roll up our sleeves and change things.
Under no circumstances, in a free society like ours and particularly in a state like Wyoming, should the populace settle for being treated as somehow secondary to government or unworthy of knowing what their government is doing on their behalf.
I consider the WPRA to be a good instrument that just needs to be fine tuned and the volume turned up to eleven. And I think it needs some sharp teeth.
The penalty for anyone violating the WPRA and persisting in keeping government secrets from the citizens should be painful enough to put a stop to that bullshit.
A constructive first step would be for the Wyoming Legislature to revisit WPRA and make sure that government in the Big Empty can’t hide behind the attorney/client privilege at the expense of the citizens’ absolute right to know what their government is doing.
Our Constitution literally demands it.
Rod Miller can be reached at: rodsmillerwyo@yahoo.com
