Protecting our right to know
By Maria Papadopoulos and Tim Grace, Enterprise staff writers
A month's worth of public outrage wasn't enough.
For Berthena Dorinvil, the mother of a 6-year-old boy accused of sexual harassment, it took a Superior Court judge's order to make Brockton school officials release her son's school records.
"I'm very frustrated. I'm upset about it. It's like they violated my rights as a parent," Dorinvil said after Wednesday's Superior Court hearing.
She might not have felt like it, but Dorinvil is probably one of the lucky ones.
Despite state "sunshine laws" designed to keep government meetings open and public records accessible, complaints abound about public employees and elected officials treating those they serve like meddling outsiders.
Sunshine Week, a national campaign for government openness, aims to change that.
For the next seven days, Sunshine Week partners — including The Enterprise — will strive to create a dialogue about the importance of open government.
For Pam Wilmot, executive director of the good government group Common Cause of Massachusetts, Sunshine Week couldn't come at a better time.
Wilmot said she has seen the number of complaints about government secrecy climb in the last few years.
Whether the increase marks a surge in public interest or a trend toward closed government "I can't say," Wilmot said.
Alan Cote, the state's supervisor of public records, said he's noticed local governments are more often refusing to release public records.
"We're getting more genuine appeals than we ever have," he said. "It's always a local issue thing. People want to know what's going on in the community and how their money is being spent."
Two years ago, Cote was complaining about Attorney General Tom Reilly's lack of interest in enforcing public record law.
"We're very frustrated here," Cote said during a 2004 interview with The Patriot Ledger. "We're finding more and more (municipalities) are finding the attorney general is not backing our requests. So we're finding less and less compliance."
Meredith Baumann, spokeswoman for the Attorney General's office, denied Reilly has ever been anything but deeply concerned when it comes to the public's right to know.
"It is a priority," Baumann said, pointing out that since 1999, 80 percent of the open record complaints referred to the AG's office have been resolved.
A Stoughton complaint was among the 20 percent that have not yielded a release of requested public records.
In November, Stoughton selectmen blocked the release of a publicly funded probe into Police Department following hostile workplace complaints, claiming it was linked to a grand jury investigation.
Three lieutenants allege they were the victims of harassment after cooperating with the criminal investigation that led to last year's indictments of the police chief and two officers.
Cote's office has agreed to place an appeal of the selectmen's decision on hold until notified by the town that the grand jury has completed its investigation.
Lack of access to public records isn't the only problem. Local boards frequently lean on executive session allowances in the open meetings laws to discuss key issue in secret.
The open meetings law allows local officials to discuss litigation, employee performance and contractual negotiations behind closed doors.
In Whitman, eight of the last 10 selectmen meetings included closed sessions.
Pembroke selectmen have met 27 times since Labor Day and found it necessary to close portions of 20 of those meetings to the public.
Halifax selectmen have met in secret 19 times since September. Selectmen in Middleboro held 16 closed meetings in those same six months; Raynham eight and Carver, seven.
In Avon, selectmen have averaged three executive sessions a month.