Niki Kelly. 2024-03-08. Indiana Capital Chronicle.

Indiana’s public records law opens like this:

“A fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of representative government is that government is the servant of the people and not their master. Accordingly, it is the public policy of the state that all persons are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those who represent them as public officials and employees.” 

And it’s clear that the GOP-led General Assembly doesn’t believe that. If lawmakers did, they would want to empower Indiana’s public access counselor — not defang it.

[…]

The use of the word liberal is interesting since the public access law itself says in black and white it must be “liberally construed.” So, the counselor role is getting neutered because Britt was following the law.

The House concurred on the Senate bill Wednesday in a 58-36 vote. My last hope is that Gov. Eric Holcomb has the courage to stand up and veto the bill.

He has a procedural argument, that the language was unvetted and the public left out of the process. And he would be in the right to always err on the side of the public’s right to know — just like the law says.

You can read the full article here: https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2024/03/08/public-access-counselor-bill-fails-on-process-and-policy/