Forum Editorial: Learn about Sunshine Law

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If you’re a member of a local board, like a school board or town council, we encourage you to attend the Sunshine Law workshop hosted by the Nodaway News Leader on Sept. 24 at 6:30 p.m. at the Maryville Community Center.

Though it’s never a bad thing for any resident to learn more about the freedom of information laws in our state, it’s especially important and useful for those elected to local positions to know more about how to be transparent with the public they serve.

For more than 50 years, our state’s Sunshine Law has afforded each and every Missourian the right to access records and meetings of the people who work on our behalf.

Although these laws can sometimes seem a little complicated or like they don’t apply to you, they help shape our expectations of transparency and accountability from just about every agency funded by taxpayer dollars.

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. Without it, something as simple as a lunch schedule from a school could be hard to come by on a school-by-school basis.

Instead, the set of statutes ensures that our government officials at every level operate with a baseline of transparency. 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.

The presentation from Jay Turner with the Missouri Attorney General’s office is free.