Today marks the beginning of Sunshine Week, a national initiative intended to promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Experience repeatedly reminds us that the right to access government records and to have the public's business discussed openly cannot be taken for granted. The people must remain diligent.

The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) launched Sunshine Week in March 2005 using an inaugural grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. It is celebrated in mid-March every year to coincide with the March 16 birthday of James Madison, the fourth president of the United States and the primary author of the Bill of Rights. In 2011 the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press joined ASNE as co-coordinator of Sunshine Week.

Advocates who persuaded often reluctant lawmakers at both the federal and state level to approve freedom of information laws, did not do so simply to provide journalists access to government records. Every citizen has the same right to see the information that their tax dollars pay to collect and prepare. In fact, the majority of requests for information continue to come from average citizens, not professional journalists.

Yet legislators seem to be forever finding reasons to carve out exceptions to open government laws. During recent sessions of the Connecticut legislature, exceptions were made to protect information about public defenders and prison guards, for example. While made with the best of intentions, the cumulative result is to diminish the ability to collect information necessary to judge the effectiveness and fairness of government.

In this state the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information, of which The Day is a member, continually monitors and lobbies against attempts to dilute the state's Freedom of Act, approved 40 years ago as one of the pioneering open-government initiatives in the country.

Locally, we witness with frustration how often public servants in town and city halls are unaware of the requirement that the vast majority of records are open to public inspection. Likewise, committees frequently misinterpret and abuse the grounds for taking business behind closed doors in executive sessions.

It is not only the job of the working press, but of the public, to insist that the guardians of these public records explain in explicit detail what exceptions to the FOI Act justify denying immediate access to information or excuse shutting citizens out of a meeting. It is not enough, for example, for a board to say it is discussing a "land transaction" as a reason for closing out the public. It must detail what transaction and why an open discussion would be detrimental to a municipality's ability to buy or sell it.

In campaigns, "Super PACs" (political action committees) and nonprofit "social welfare" organizations accumulate millions of dollars to promote and, more often, tear down a candidate without ever having to disclose where the money is coming from. Though overtly political, TV and radio commercials from these groups avoid the use of words such as "vote for" or "vote against" to evade compliance with campaign-finance disclosure laws.

The system cries out for change, but U.S. Supreme Court rulings, citing freedom of speech protections, have made it more difficult to implement the rules necessary to assure access to the source of that speech. It should not be considered a hinderance of free speech to require accountability.

On Sunshine Week we call upon the citizens to demand that their elected leaders require greater transparency about where the money is coming from to influence elections, and to oppose efforts to restrict access to their government.