Far too often, Northwest Indiana local government officials balk and stonewall when faced with basic requests for public information.
So a recent Indiana Court of Appeals ruling, which took Cedar Lake to task for an affront to open records laws, was a welcome revelation.
The ruling centered on a case involving the town's firing of former administrative assistant and special events coordinator Nicole Hoekstra.
The reasoning behind Cedar Lake's termination of Hoekstra's employment should be enough to boil the blood of any citizen who believes taxpayer-funded records maintained by government should be freely available to the public.
Court records indicate Hoekstra received an informal request from Eric Wolverton, an engineer working on a municipal project, for minutes from a town meeting he was unable to attend.
Minutes recorded by government workers during public meetings are clearly open records under Indiana's public access laws. Truly open cities and towns post such minutes on municipal websites, making them available without need for access requests. This practice costs nothing and provides a public service.
Hoekstra, knowing Wolverton's request was for public records, emailed him a copy of the requested minutes. In other words, she complied with the law.
But Cedar Lake officials fired Hoekstra, claiming she should have required Wolverton to fill out a town form formally requesting the information.
The appeals court ruled against the town for doing so, ordering that unemployment benefits be paid to Hoekstra.
We couldn't agree more with a judicial decision that really shouldn't have taken any time at all to sort out.
This ruling should serve as a warning to other Region municipal leaders with a penchant for thumbing their noses at state and federal open records and meetings laws.
The spirit of public records laws doesn't require that residents fill out special forms in requesting public documents. Under the law, public officials also have no right to ask why members of the public want such information, or what they intend to use it for.
If tax dollars funded the activity and process for keeping the records, then the records are generally public. Period.
In the end, none of these records belongs to the public officials who seek to create hurdles to access or punish employees who comply with the law. The information belongs to the public at-large -- and must be provided upon request.
An untenable reality remains, in spite of the appeals court ruling. Civil lawsuits filed by citizens often are the only recourse of residents who seek clearly public information that is denied by Hoosier public officials.
It's time for the Indiana Legislature to consider fines and other penalties for public officials and agencies that stonewall citizens who seek information and documents to which they’re clearly entitled under the law.
A watchdog effect arises from the free flow of public information — one that keeps citizens in the know and government officials honest.
Now we need some teeth in the law to discourage cases like this from ever getting to the point where employees are fired for providing information, or citizens are sent away empty-handed.