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then don't do anything that falls into that category. It's less about whether something will appear in the newspaper and more about whether we as citizens are able to know how our government representatives are spending our money or whether they are scrupulous in the process of working for us.
• Many people who are elected to office have the public's best interests at heart. Some, unfortunately, are willing to cross the line of ethics, greed or power and abuse their public trust, sometimes in small ways but other times in big ways. Based on the tenents of democracy, we all should know when that happens. Knowing they could be found out in public could even be a deterrent. If instead, government actions and spending are secret, it is no longer a democracy in which the people can make enlightened decisions.
• That's why news organizations advocate for transparency at all levels of government, including committees of public boards, such as a school district committee judging whether a book should be banned from the library. In an open government, those decisions are made in public. It's also why lawsuits involving government officials should not be sealed if they are settled in court, leaving the public never knowing the nature of the infraction and how much taxpayer money was paid out in the settlement, an amount that can be hefty but is being kept from the people.
• Violating the public trust and expecting to keep that secret -- whether it be a big deal or small -- is destructive to freedom. Are we as a society willing to settle for that, a secretive, mediocre representation of us?
• We must change our culture and our thinking to know that just because we know our elected officials and trust them, doesn't mean they should govern without transparency.
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