Sunshine Week: An update on government openness in Ohio

It’s Sunshine Week again and journalists around Ohio and the U.S. are making an effort to educate the public about the importance of government transparency.

Columbus Dispatch reporter Randy Ludlow — a past recipient of the chapters First Amendment award for his blog “Your Right to Know” — writes that the number of roadblocks to public information in Ohio has been increasing and forecast for openness is getting worse:

Legislators continue to trot out new proposals to restrict access to information. Governments on all levels continue to shop for reasons to deny records requests. Court rulings continue to go against those seeking to look behind the government curtain.

Ludlow’s Sunday story goes into more depth on the issue.

David Marburger, an attorney with Baker Hostetler’s Cleveland office and a noted authority on First Amendment law, called on the state to correct problems in open-records law in an op-ed piece this week.

Here are some open-records resources for reporters from national SPJ:

• Sunshine Week Web site
• Chapter FOI program ideas
• Campus FOI resources
• FOI activities for newsrooms
• Writing about FOI
• Quotable expert sources
• FOI studies and reports
• Curriculum and classroom ideas for teachers
• FOI resources