Forum Editorial:

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March 12-18 marks Sunshine Week across the country, a weeklong event meant to bring attention to open records laws and the key role they play in keeping our democracy functioning.

In Missouri, 2023 also marks the 50th anniversary of our state’s Sunshine Law and the protections it affords each and every citizen through the access to public meetings and records that it guarantees.

These kinds of laws can certainly come off as abstract, and maybe even pedantic.

To journalists, obviously, their effects are a little more tangible. Even in a place like rural northwest Missouri, the work this newspaper does to keep the public informed could not be done without the Sunshine Law.

Every time a report appears in The Forum citing a government document or a meeting — from something as rote as a financial statement to criminal and court records to emails between government officials — that information is only available thanks to our state’s open records law.

But perhaps even more important than the documents and meetings themselves is the statement the Sunshine Law makes about how we view our government at its most basic level. By presuming all records and meetings to be available to the public except for some very specific exceptions, the Sunshine Law is a reminder that our government officials — from the governor to local school districts — act on our behalf, and that what they do, what they say, the decisions they make and how they make them ultimately do not belong to anyone but us as a whole.

Though parts of the law have become more restrictive over the past 50 years, and though many in government seek to carve out even more exceptions to keep what they do and say private, the Sunshine Law still serves today as a pillar of American democracy at its finest.