Public Has Right to Know - The Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register

Public Has Right to Know

The Intelligencer

POSTED: September 15, 2008

Public officials and agencies in our state compare well with those in most other states in terms of compliance with our Freedom of Information Act, according to a national study. West Virginia was ranked 10th best among the 50 states.

That should mean little or nothing to Mountain State residents, however. The bottom line is that public officials and agencies here received a grade of only 66 percent in complying with public and press requests for information.

West Virginia has strict, no-nonsense rules for officials and agencies who are asked to provide documents and reports covered under the FOI Act. That may be why we scored well in comparison to most other states.

But a two-thirds success rate in obtaining public documents simply isn't good enough. It means that too many public officials don't take the FOI Act seriously, either because they don't bother to understand it or because they don't want to.

That is unacceptable.

 
 

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