The Domestic War Horse

I write for the paper. I tape all pub­lic meet­ings. Over the last seven years I have learned my rights. They are your rights too.

Sun­shine – You have the right …

There has been a lot of dis­cus­sion lately about pub­lic meet­ings, pub­lic records, hold­ing elected offi­cials account­able, and get­ting peo­ple involved in local gov­ern­ment. Just in case you are inter­ested, I want to remind you of your rights.

You have the right to be at any and all pub­lic meet­ings, pub­lic hear­ings, spe­cial meet­ings, bid open­ings, and gath­er­ings of elected officials.

You have the right to know where all your tax money is going.

You have the right to know and under­stand the government’s respon­si­bil­i­ties to you includ­ing The Sun­shine Laws. (http://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/sunshine and http://sunshinereview.org)

You have the right to join in the recit­ing of the pledge with those gath­ered at the pub­lic meet­ing … or not.

You have the right to pray along with the pub­lic offi­cials or stand silently dur­ing the moment of silence … or not.

You have the right to par­tic­i­pate in pub­lic meet­ings. Make sure you know when dur­ing the meet­ing you are allowed to speak or ask ques­tions and how long the pub­lic offi­cials will allow you to speak. If there is an impor­tant mat­ter you wish to bring up, con­tact the gov­ern­men­tal entity ahead of time so your name gets placed on the agenda.

You have the right to tape any pub­lic meet­ing and share that tape (or dig­i­tal) record­ing with any­one. A pub­lic meet­ing is open to all.

You have the right to ask your elected offi­cials ques­tions about what­ever issues you are con­cerned with. You have the right to expect answers to those ques­tions, if not imme­di­ately, within a rea­son­able amount of time.

You have the right to go to a pub­lic office and ask for infor­ma­tion. Sun­shine Laws state that the infor­ma­tion you are ask­ing for might not be given to you imme­di­ately, but must be given to you within a “rea­son­able” amount of time. Remem­ber that the gov­ern­men­tal entity has the right to charge you a rea­son­able cost for copies.

I have heard some say those who do not vote or do not attend pub­lic meet­ings are lazy or don’t care. I dis­agree. I don’t think peo­ple are lazy, I think peo­ple are over­whelmed and don’t have time to attend pub­lic meet­ings. I think gov­ern­ment has got­ten so com­pli­cated that after get­ting their big toe wet, folks feel they don’t have the energy to cross the ocean.

I think there are a lot of rea­sons why folks don’t show up to pub­lic meet­ings includ­ing the time of day of the meet­ing (morn­ings are bad for most peo­ple), the place of the meet­ing and the fact that most folks seem to have a dif­fi­cult time find­ing out when there are meetings.

It also takes a lot of work and time to fol­low what the gov­ern­ment is doing. Depend­ing where you live, it may take you 10 min­utes to an hour to get to the meet­ing. Then you have to find where the meet­ing is. Then the meet­ing may take any­where from a half hour to two hours or more. Then there is the drive home.

But it is worth the effort. There is power in knowl­edge and you still have quite a bit of say at the local level. Go to a few meet­ings. Pick one pub­lic entity that directly effects you, say, a vil­lage coun­cil meet­ing or a town­ship meet­ing, and go.

Don’t wait to cel­e­brate your right to Sun­shine (March 11–17, 2012, National Sun­shine Week). Go to a pub­lic meet­ing as soon as you can. Meet­ings are free, but there prob­a­bly won’t be snacks. (Note: The Tomor­row Cen­ter Board in Edi­son DOES serve snacks at their meet­ings.) – orig­i­nally pub­lished in The Mor­row County Sentinel

Posted by Rachel Mendell on Oct 18 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.