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Right-to-know law is now 50 years old

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The Beatles rubbed the ruling Marcos family the wrong way in July 1966 for skipping out on a soiree that had been planned in their honor in the Philippines. Also that month, the United States ramped up its attacks on North Vietnam, Britain nationalized its steel industry, Montgomery Clift died of a heart attack and shares of the McDonald’s restaurant chain began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Meanwhile, while he was stashed away at his ranch in the Texas Hill Country for the Fourth of July holiday, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act, which, for the first time, codified into federal law the idea that citizens have a right to know what is going on within the halls of power and examine documents detailing how decisions are made.

Johnson signed the bill with great reluctance, which explains why it was done at his ranch with little fanfare. His Cabinet opposed it, and Johnson allegedly remarked “I may be making a mistake.” Republicans on Capitol Hill, a more moderate cohort in those days, supported it in part because of what it could expose about Johnson’s White House and its conduct of the Vietnam War. But, despite Johnson’s misgivings, the Freedom of Information Act turned out to be one of the most significant pieces of legislation to emerge during his tenure, and considering that Medicare and Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act and a host of consumer and environmental protections were enacted under his watch, that’s saying something.

Once the Freedom of Information Act became law in 1967, citizens had the right to request copies of laws, reports and other material related to the day-to-day operations of government. If the request goes unfulfilled, citizens have the right to appeal the decision and take the fight into the courts. Most states have followed with their own right-to-know laws in the years since the Freedom of Information Act came into being, and President Obama recently signed a bill reforming the law. It will make responses to requests speedier, make it harder to withhold information that is more than 25 years old and emphasize a presumption of openness.

“Government transparency is at the heart of any democracy,” Jonathan Jones, the director of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition, recently told The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. “The passage in Congress of the federal (Freedom of Information) law 50 years ago brought much-needed reform to pull government into the sunshine. It opened doors of government for citizen inspection and gave each person the opportunity to see how well his or her government works.”

It wasn’t always thus. Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the country’s most revered commander in chief, elbowed aside Congress when they wanted information on his management of the Civil War, and the federal government went on a bender of classifying documents at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s.

While it is understandable that some of the day-to-day mechanics of government should remain tightly held, particularly if it involves troops on perilous missions or diplomats stationed in dangerous outposts, the government that represents its constituents and theoretically works in their interests should be open to their queries.

And that should be the case on all levels of government.

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