D’Anna: It’s Sunshine Week, so why do some government officials want to keep you in the dark?

Happy Sunshine Week to those of you celebrate. I hope that’s most of you, but I’m sure there are handful of public officials — a small minority to be sure — who’d rather you be kept in the dark.

If you’re unfamiliar with Sunshine Week, it’s an observance established by news industry leaders nearly two decades ago to promote open government and call attention to the importance of freedom of information in a healthy democracy.

It’s always held during the week of March 16, the birthday of James Madison, our fourth president and chief architect of the First Amendment, which guarantees five of our most precious freedoms: the right to worship (or not) freely; freedom of speech; the right to assemble peaceably; the right to petition the government for redress of grievances; and freedom of the press.

Madison, like many of our founders, believed strongly that people who are well-informed make the best decisions, particularly when it comes the governments that represent them.

“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both,” Madison wrote. “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

He was specifically addressing public education, but journalists today take those words to heart as we battle on an almost daily basis provide the public with “the power that knowledge gives.”

And over the last year, Press Democrat reporters, as well as colleagues at our sister publications, have indeed battled mightily.

One of our key tools in those battles is the California Public Records Act, which ensures that public officials keep records of their government activities, and that those records, with limited exceptions, are made available to the public. This includes things like government contracts, invoices, police reports, (court records are covered under a different statute but are still public), body-worn camera footage, 911 transcripts and property records. And, perhaps uncomfortably for some public officials, their emails, text messages and other correspondence, particularly if made on government-issued phones or computers.

(Another key tool is the Ralph M. Brown Act, which ensures, again with extremely limited exceptions, that public’s business is conducted, well, in public, which is why you, your neighbor and anyone else can pretty much walk into any school board, city council or board of supervisors meeting and watch them in action. Or inaction, as those of us who’ve covered too many of those meetings to count can attest.)

Over the past year, reporters from The Press Democrat and our sister publications, the Sonoma Index-Tribune and the Petaluma Argus Courier, have relied on public records to produce stories that are of critical importance to our communities, from documenting increases in school violence to identifying hundreds of thousands of dollars in questionable billing practices by a company that had received $26 million in no-bid contracts from Sonoma County.

And there are dozens of other examples. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to pry records from the fingertips of some public officials. Sometimes they argue that they have nothing responsive to our request. (You’d be surprised how many attempt that argument even though we have a leaked copy in hand.) Sometimes they argue that they don’t have the staff to devote to the search. While we’re sympathetic, the law requires transparency without regard to budget restraints. And some sit on requests for the maximum time allowable by law, even though there’s nothing that prevents them from releasing information immediately.

You’d think public officials would want as much information as possible to flow to the people who pay their salaries. But when that information tells an unflattering story about those in charge, it’s easy to see why they don’t.

As journalists, we sometimes get criticized for our requests for access to public records or public meetings. The fact is, we’re not asking for anything that any average citizen isn’t also entitled to. And besides, we’re taxpayers too. We paid for those records to be compiled, gathered and stored, and so did you.

Public information doesn’t belong to public officials. It belongs to all of us. And we’re all better off when knowledge, as Madison said, governs ignorance.

John D’Anna is senior news director at The Press Democrat.

You can send letters to the editor to letters@pressdemocrat.com.