Sunshine laws

What are the sunshine laws in your state?
I don't know about your state but here in Indiana there is a whole body of laws passed by the Legislature with one purpose: To protect Hoosiers' right to know what their local and state governments are doing.
I spent a couple hours last Friday sitting in the offices of the Hoosier State Press Association, learning the latest about Indiana's sunshine laws from Steve Key, the director of the Hoosier State Press Association.
Steve is an attorney as well as a former journalist.
He gave all the reporters in our little group from The Paper of Montgomery County and The Times of Noblesville the latest booklet of information about our state's sunshine laws.
Reading state statutes may not be exciting but the information is extremely valuable when you are chasing down that sexy story you just have to be the first to break.
There is probably someone like Steve Key in your state to whom you can go when you have questions.
Three examples come to mind.
Several years ago, we learned our county commissioners were meeting without notice to interview candidates for a job. We called Steve and got an opinion we could publish along with a banner story about the apparently secret meetings (even though they were being held in the commissioners' room in the county courthouse.)
A couple years ago, the story broke that a married county official was using her county e-mail to romance an official in another county. We asked and quickly learned what we could do to get a copy of those e-mails. That story, I'm sorry to say, was not our exclusive but we stayed on top of it from day one.
I learned a lot about Indiana's Open Door Law through that experience and those elected officials learned to use Gmail or Yahoo for their dalliances. Last I heard, she was divorced and they were getting married.
More recently, a police officer tried to confiscate my smart phone after I took photos of a factory parking lot where a police officer had shot a man who allegedly tried to attack the officer.
I did not surrender my phone and told the officer he would have to arrest me to get it.
After the fact, I called Steve Key to learn what my rights really were under the law. I had run a bluff with the officer and it worked. Despite my bravado, I really didn't know what my rights were in that situation but I knew my publisher and editor would stand by me if I was arrested.
And, that's the real lesson of this column. Don't be afraid to ask questions from someone like Steve Key when you don't know the law.
No one expects reporters or editors to be attorneys any more than we are expected to be medical experts or experts in nearly any field we cover. But we should be wise enough to learn who to go to for the answers.
By the way, my wife was not at all thrilled with the idea I might have gone to jail. Oh, well.