Comparison of State Open-meeting Laws

More than two hundred years ago, the idea of open government and an informed public led our founding fathers to a revolutionary concept-government built on the foundation of free speech and a free press. That concept--both a principle and an ideal throughout the history of our country--has been both the mainstay of our freedom and an elusive goal never quite within our reach. As our nation progressed from frontier to industrialized and then to high-tech society, the paradox endured. Even now, the growth of big government and the explosion of knowledge in a computer-based world have not altered our historic need to nurture freedom of information. That need remains unchanged. What has changed are the situations we now must confront to protect those freedoms. Today, freedom of information means not only the free circulation of information, but also--and sometimes even more importantly--free access to information. During the mid-'70s, access to information became an issue of increasing public interest which culminated in the passage of state and federal legislation increasing access to governmental information. Since that time, public interest and legislative activity have declined in an atmosphere of national conservativism and political disinterest. What concern there is now has been brought forward for the most part by journalists. A recent publication of the Society of Professional Journalists, 1984-85 Freedbm of Information Report--Gaining Access (not available in time for inclusion in this thesis) summarized major freedom of information issues and included a state-by-state survey of open meetings and records. Regardless of the degree of public awareness or the strength of political support, freedom-of-information issues exist today. An awareness of these issues and their importance led the writer to undertake this thesis, which examines the current status of the freedom-ofinformation movement by scrutinizing access--access to one major source of information about state and local government: open meetings. The study sought to determine the effectiveness of today's open-meeting laws, and gauge the progress of open-meeting legislation over the past 10-years. While open-meeting laws constitute a substantive legal topic, empirical research was chosen as the appropriate research design for this thesis. A paradigm selected fo~ comparative analysis of the laws allowed the legal research to be presented through the sociological methodology of mass communication research. The study provides an overview of current state open-meeting laws and a method of comparing the 50 state laws with each other and with state laws as they were written 10 years ago.Mass Communicatio