Texans want to know how officials spend public money, make decisions, and respond to challenges that face the state. Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, says the process can be improved by relying on open records and free speech.
Shannon previously worked for the Associated Press, the Dallas Morning News, and other news outlets, and she relied on the Public Information Act and the Open Meetings Act in her coverage. Her nonprofit foundation began in Dallas in 1978, then moved to Austin in 2009 to be closer to state policymaking. Shannon has led the organization since 2013.
“We are all about government transparency and protecting free speech rights,” she says. “Those things go hand in hand, because if you want to speak out and hold your government accountable, you’ve got to have the information.” She adds that without records about how money is spent and why programs are designed the way they are, “your hands are tied.”
Interest is rising, and Shannon says attendance for the foundation’s conference in September reached peak numbers. “Business is booming in the open government world right now.”
Panels at the conference examined transparency around the Hill Country floods, including questions about emergency alerts and staffing. “Government transparency transcends a whole lot of different topics,” Shannon says. “You want to be able to ask for records that help you learn what happened and how things can be done better in the future.”
Texas built strong statutes in the early 1970s, according to Shannon. “Everything is presumed open,” she says of the Public Information Act. “If the government wants to withhold… they have to go to the attorney general’s office for a ruling.”
That structure keeps the burdens of disclosure on agencies rather than citizens. “You can request information and sit back and wait,” she says. “The burden is not on you.”
She makes clear, however, that pressure still exists to carve away public access to government records. “The legislature has done some whittling away of the law through the years and put in a lot more exceptions,” she says.
The foundation works with the Texas Sunshine Coalition to defend the Act and negotiate fixes when local complaints turn into bills with unintended consequences. “We sat down at the table,” she says of one proposal aimed at curbing mass or computer-generated “bot” requests that overwhelm agencies, “and said, here’s how we can come up with a compromise that addresses your problem but doesn’t shut down information.”
Recent progress came in the 89th Legislature, according to Shannon. Agencies must also tell requesters when a prior attorney-general ruling already allows withholding. “The requester knows the outcome and isn’t there hanging in limbo,” Shannon says.
Enforcement remains a priority. “There needs to be more options for attorney’s fees” when citizens win records lawsuits, she says. Some agencies stall until “the eve of trial” and then release the documents to avoid a final judgment. “People shouldn’t have to go to court to seek their public information,” Shannon says, and adds, “we would really like to see that in the law.”
Electronic records make access easy, but also require more careful management. Shannon advocates for a system where “personal chatter stays private,” but “public business stays public.” Claims that messages are “intimate and embarrassing” deserve careful scrutiny, she says. “I don’t want that to be overused or misconstrued,” she says.
Good models exist, according to Shannon. “The Texas Comptroller’s office does things very well,” she says. “If you’re looking for certain data and it’s contained in spreadsheet form, they understand,” she says. The office typically will provide the spreadsheet, “so people can understand.”
According to Shannon, agencies should post commonly requested spreadsheets and documents online and answer formal requests promptly. “Government information is their information,” she says. “We want people to be able to get that information quickly, easily.”