Print edition: 
Without access to the documents and conversations that drive government decisions, the public is left to wonder what it doesn't know about the work of public officials at the local, state and federal levels. Each denied request for information or access invites distrust.
Which is why there is a need for Sunshine Week, a national initiative meant to foster open government and freedom of information.
This year's observance, March 14-20, finds too many in public life still treating citizen and media access as a threat or nuisance that interferes with their work. The room for improvement extends from Washington, D.C., to the Kansas Statehouse to communities big and small.
Kansas remains alone among states in treating probable-cause affidavits as closed records, denying the public the ability to know the legal basis for criminal suspects' arrests. Child-in-need-of-care records also are presumed to be closed, even in cases where a child has died, nearly died or disappeared.
But the state took a significant step forward Thursday with the Senate Judiciary Committee's voice vote favoring a shield law for Kansas reporters, with state Sen. Les Donovan, R-Wichita, among the supporters. The law would offer protection when courts try to compel journalists to turn over notes or testify about confidential sources and unpublished information — as a judge tried to do to a reporter last month in Dodge City, with the threat of a $1,000-a-day fine. More than 35 other states have such laws, which protect media independence. The bill deserves passage in the full Senate and House.
Other abuses still crop up locally — sometimes willfully, sometimes from lack of awareness.
Last year, the Sedgwick County District Attorney's Office found that the Wichita City Council, with the assent of the city's law department, violated the Kansas Open Meetings Act by using secret ballots to choose a vice mayor. Last fall, The Eagle and others took issue with initial decisions by the city and Sedgwick County to treat proposals for downtown revitalization and the Kansas Coliseum's redevelopment, respectively, as closed records.
Lest people think that sunshine laws serve only media: Allegations of open-meetings violations led to municipal leaders being ousted this month in recall elections in Ogden and Gardner. And some of the fiercest advocates for transparency in Kansas have been conservative bloggers and think tanks.
The Eagle continues to try to do its part year round. The You Oughta Know columns on Mondays let readers know about the array of information available. Other Eagle projects regularly are made possible by the state's open-meetings and open-records laws, such as the recent analysis and database of Wichita parking tickets.
Regrettably, more information technology doesn't automatically mean more access. To keep the sun shining on government, public and media will have to keep the pressure on.
