InkBlots

The Neshoba Democrat’s sponsored copies will no longer be welcome at a Philly nuring home, so sez a hospital rep.

If someone steals your car in Mississippi, you call the police. If someone defrauds you, you call the attorney general. But if someone denies you access to public records, no taxpayer-funded agency will help you. Instead, you hire an attorney.

In Mississippi, a state with a long history of government secrecy, it can be difficult, expensive, time-consuming - and sometimes all but impossible - to know what government leaders are up to and what special interests pull their strings.

More:

• Charlie Mitchell: “Put 10 Mississippi government officials or commission appointees in a room and it would be interesting to hear their answers to a quiz on what constitutes a ‘personnel matter,’ probably the most often invoked exception to the state’s open meetings act.”
• Mississippi’s open records and public meeting laws contain exceptions, broad confusing language and little means of enforcement that throw up roadblocks to citizens seeking to use the laws to gain access to their government…Exemptions for such items as “personnel” matters are often broadly interpreted by officials, or interpreted in various conflicting ways to deny access to information.
• Greenwood Commonwealth: Secret government is bad government.
• Kevin Cooper: “Catching a public servant doing wrong is a little like discovering your preacher is a drunken gambler, who kicks dogs and pinches babies for fun on the weekends.”
• David Hampton’s blog: “The best remedy for secrecy is citizen involvement. That is what passed the original laws and that is what it will take to toughen them.”
• Andy Taggart’s blog: “Here’s hoping that the…first initiative in [the] new push is to obtain a copy of the ’sealed’ settlement agreement between Attorney General Jim Hood and State Farm Insurance Company.
• Related: Tougher ethics rules up for debate.
• Related: Attorney General Jim Hood pushing for campaign finance reform this session.