In one of his first official acts, the day after his inauguration, President Barack Obama issued orders dealing with “Transparency and Open Government,” thus making good on his campaign promise to return to the presumption of openness of all government records.
Compare this with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who also promised transparency, pledging that within 100 days of his first inauguration in 2002 he would offer us a chance to vote on changes to open up to public view procedures for awarding lucrative city contracts. Fast forward seven years: no such ballot issue has ever appeared.
And when just last month the city council voted unanimously to force Nagin to comply with state laws for openness, the mayor vetoed the ordinance. Only the white city council members voted to override the veto.
One of the city council members who did not vote to override declared she was shocked — shocked! — to have suddenly discovered over the two weeks since her earlier vote that “transparency” is actually a code word for racism.
Nagin is also defending himself in a public records lawsuit which WWL-TV filed when he refused to turn over his 2008 calendar as required by law. Flouting court order, he turned over only the second half of the year and claimed someone accidentally deleted the first half. And the second half was heavily edited, with the mayor inventing some sort of “executive privilege” for the edits.
He also refused to turn over subpoenaed e-mails; he claimed they had been erased due to a lack of storage space on his computers.
A six-month gap? Erased records? Executive privilege? Shades of Richard Nixon, the president forced to resign after he attempted to cover up records which eventually revealed widespread corruption in conjunction with his re-election campaign.
Get a USB flash-drive for extra storage, Mr. Mayor! Get a grip!
Events took an even uglier turn last week — no space here to detail yet another blatant violation of government-in-the-sunshine laws. Suffice to say it involved a black New Orleans official, improperly released e-mails of the white city council members (e-mails which surely included references to legal matters and other material which the law says must first be removed before release) and implications that the second incident was somehow defensible as revenge for the alleged racism of the first.
Trust me — the Louisiana representative of two national freedom-of-information organizations, the co-founder of a statewide coalition fighting for open government — the goals of open records laws have nothing to do with race.
Ray Nagin may indeed have something to hide from those rumored to be investigating his administration, but it is absurd for anyone to claim that the revelation of political corruption made available by compliance with public records laws is somehow racist, or popular four-time Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards (who is white) would not be serving 10 years in Club Fed.
And what about the success of The Innocence Project, in which hundreds of prisoners nationwide have been released, more than a dozen from Death Row, after DNA testing and hard-fought-for court records revealed case after case of prosecutorial misconduct? Most of those released prisoners are black.
And surely no one — not even Ray Nagin — would accuse President Obama of racism for his dramatic support of transparency, actions which the director of the national archives called the “most emphatic call for open government from any president in history.” For President Obama, according to worldwide press reports at the time of his election, identifies himself racially as, well, you know …
Sherry Sunshine, also known as S.L. Alexander, PhD, a journalist who serves on the faculty of the School of Mass Communication, wishes everyone a happy National Government-in-the-Sunshine Week (March 15-21). She can be reached at [email protected].
