'You are my sunshine' ...

Daylight saving time returns Sunday, March 14, signaling more late-afternoon sunshine and the upcoming warmer season.
It also kicks off National Sunshine Week, March 14-20, which celebrates and brings awareness to free and open access to public information and an accountable government.
The theme this year is “It’s your right to know,” and it sheds light on the importance of community journalists in keeping the public informed.
Open meeting and data practices laws exists for everyone, but journalists are trained to navigate the sometimes complicated avenues to retrieve it.
Often when requesting public information for the newspaper, we remind our public officials that it’s not about us and it’s not about the Star Herald, it’s about our readers and local residents.
It’s our job to find and report on public information, but the ultimate goal is to inform community members what their public servants are doing with our tax dollars.
(Funny side story: We once misspelled “public” in a letter to the editor about displaying the Ten Commandments in “pubic” places.)
There are clear laws dictating what school boards, city councils, county commissioners and other government entities must share openly with whoever asks to see it.
It’s Minnesota Statute 13.02, for those who’d like to look it up.
You don’t have to be a Star Herald reporter to request an accident report at the Sheriff’s Office or to request the city’s salary schedule or the county’s road and bridge plan. It’s all information that, by law, is open to the public.
As Star Herald readers, though, you can trust we’re asking for that information when it’s pertinent and our local public officials are aware of open meeting and data practices laws.
Sometimes we don’t get what we ask for on the first request, but we’re fortunate in our community to have positive relationships with our local leaders.
They, like we, mostly have our community’s interests at heart, and they know that an open and transparent government is good for everyone.
As we’ve seen with recent national leadership — denying access to what should be public information generally means there’s something to hide, and we can be grateful that professional journalists at trusted news outlets are working hard to keep our leaders accountable.
That’s why, during Sunshine Week next week, we like to remind readers that freedoms of any kind shouldn’t be taken for granted, and that freedom of information may perhaps be the most important of all.
Because, as history has shown with dictatorships through the centuries — and even recent times — the first way a dictator rises to power is to shut down government information and discredit the free press.
Doing so allows cover-ups and corruption to carry on in darkness while a government mouthpiece assures residents that its leaders are good for them.
Freedoms, as we’ve been told, aren’t free. They’ve been paid for dearly. And freedom of information, likewise, should be protected as passionately as all other freedoms.
Happy Sunshine Week, dear readers. Let’s celebrate life in daylight.