Government

Sunshine week is all about the public's right to know. Training is necessary to ensure that all elected and appointed government officials understand the open records and open meetings laws so they can share information with the public more effectively. This Sunshine Week Cartoon © Gary Varvel.

Attorney General Abbott praises local and state officials as they learn more about government in the Sunshine

Response from officials taking open government training called impressive

From the Office of Greg Abbott, Attorney General of Texas

March 22, 2006

AUSTIN,Jan. 2006–Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today kicked off national “Sunshine Week” by praising the thousands of local and state government officials who have completed the open government training required by Sen. Jeff Wentworth’s Senate Bill 286. The law became effective Jan. 1, and the training is being offered and approved by the Attorney General.

“I am pleased that public servants across the spectrum in Texas have taken the spirit of open government to heart and enrolled in essential open government training through my Open Records Division,” said Attorney General Abbott.

"The City of Colleyville in North Texas is a prime example of this spirit. I applaud its public officials for engaging in a comprehensive forum on open government and showing our training videos recently with legislators, locally elected officials, news media, our open records staff and, of course, the citizens whom they serve. That’s the way democracy is supposed to work.”

The Attorney General’s Office has, to date, issued approximately 5,000 certificates documenting that individuals in government have successfully completed either the open records or open meetings components of the training, or both. The office has also shipped about 2,000 DVDs to requestors wishing to take the training.

The training of government officials established by the new law is a counterpunch to the explosion of requests the Attorney General has received over several years for open records rulings. In 2005, the Attorney General received approximately 12,000 requests for rulings, an almost 50 percent increase since 2003.

The Attorney General’s Open Government Hotline at 1-877-OPEN-TEX fields more than 10,000 calls per year from citizens wishing to file complaints or seeking general information about how the law works.

“We have all the pieces in place now to keep Texas in the forefront among ‘sunshine’ states, and our goal is to drive these requests for ruling drastically downward,” Attorney General Abbott concluded. “Public officials no longer have any excuse for claiming ignorance of the law. Instead, we are seeing the dawning of the day when government officials and their agencies are models of democracy in action.”

Information on this and other topics is available on the Attorney General's Web site at www.oag.state.tx.us.