So here it is the eve of Sunshine Week and we in Massachusetts have precious little to celebrate.
With every passing day the state’s public records law — never one of the best in the nation, but hardly in the sorry state it finds itself today — is being nickel-and-dimed to death by regulations and the bureaucrats who interpret them.
Case in point, a series of recent rulings by the secretary of state’s office that effectively put off limits to the press and the public a host of information about arrests and criminal records.
We credit the reporting of The Boston Globe’s Todd Wallack with bringing this situation to light in an article in Wednesday’s edition. And today we stand with our colleagues at the Globe, the Patriot Ledger (and others in the GateHouse Media family) that are running similar editorials — in condemning a practice that threatens not just the ability of the press to do its job but public safety as well.
In one of the most recent rulings, issued Feb. 20, the state’s supervisor of public records Shawn Williams, who works for Secretary of State William Galvin, wrote that individual police departments have “the discretion to withhold records determined to be [covered by] CORI” (the Criminal Offender Record Information law).
That leaves to the whim of local departments — or in one particularly egregious case, the state police — whether to release arrest reports, mug shots or in the case of the Department of Corrections the entire list of people incarcerated in the state prison system.
But most disturbing is the wholesale “exemption” carved out for police officers when they are accused of a crime. In such cases the secretary of state’s office has ruled those arrests may be considered part of their “personnel record” and, therefore not subject to a public records request.
So a regular civilian charged with drunken driving may end up on the Boston Police Department’s blog. But similar charges against a police officer? Well, that’s just a “personnel” issue. Thus is born a dangerous double standard.
Yes, such rulings can be challenged in court. But court challenges are long and costly.
The secretary of state’s office has proven itself no friend of the media, but more importantly no friend of the public’s right to know. On this matter we who cherish that right today speak as one in its defense.
