The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 107, No. 46, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 13, 1997 Page: 2 of 32
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opinion
oaae
Secrets, good government don’t mix
by Dan Morales, Texas Attorney General
III HEN DOES A GOVERNMENT employee or
■ ■ a public official have a right to keep secrets
from the people who pay his or her salary? My answer
is: “Almost never.”
Most citizens understand there are times when
government secrecy is required, such as in cases
involving national security or investigations to deter-
mine criminal wrong doing. In fact, there are other
reasonable “exceptions” to the requirement of open
government, such as the protection of personal re-
cords of children who attend public schools.
Nonetheless, most Texans also understand that
the principle of open government is more than a good
(Zcutad
RECORD
USPS 087-960
P.O. Box 898, Canadian (Hemphill) Texas 79014
Fax #: (806)323-5738
BEN EZZELL Editor & Publisher 1948-1993
NANCY EZZELL Editor & Publisher
LAURIE EZZELL BROWN
Co-Editor & Photographer
e-mail address: lrbrown@well.com
GRETA BASS Advertising Manager
STAFF:
Leslie Fry, Kim McKinney,
Mary Smithee, Gabriel Brown
-***-
Periodicals postage paid at the Post Office in
Canadian, Texas, Published each Thursday after-
noon in Canadian by Nancy M. Ezzell.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to
The Canadian Record, Box 898, Canadian. TX 79014
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idea. It is a bedrock principle of our democracy.
Those of us who serve as public officials and govern-
ment employees should never forget that we work for
the public, to benefit the public, and we should expect
our work to be subject to public scrutiny.
Last spring, the Texas Legislature passed a bill
making public information about traffic accidents
harder to get. The problem they were trying to fix
was a legitimate one. Many people felt that certain
professionals were engaged in “ambulance chasing”
by scrutinizing public accident reports and then call-
ing people who had suffered severe injuries in these
accidents in order to solicit their business. These
victims were being harassed.
The effort to protect privacy was well intended,
but it created a real obstacle to the public’s right to
know. In one case, the mayor of a Texas city and his
wife were involved in a car crash that involved a
fatality. The Texas Department of Public Safety, in
its effort to follow the new law', refused to release
information regarding that accident.
Several Texas news organizations challenged the
law, and for good reason. They understood that it
interfered with their right to know, and conse-
quently, the public’s right to know.
As Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “Our liberty
depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot
be limited without being lost.”
The Texas Daily Newspaper Association and the
Texas Press Association w'ant the Texas Legislature
to revisit this issue and find a way to deal with the
“ambulance chasers” without infringing on the pub-
lic’s right to know. We support that effort.
In another recent instance, our office w'as asked
by a non-profit organization whether the phone re-
cords of the Texas Supreme Court were open to the
public according to the Texas Public Information Act.
We drew' on a number of court cases w’hich made
a distinction between the court records of the judici-
ary, which are excluded, and the administrative re-
cords of the judiciary, which are not, in our view',
excluded from the Act. We ruled that while the judi-
Continued on Page 5
YOU JUST CANT SAY those folks on the Amarillo Daily’s Regional
New-s Desk aren’t on top of things around here. Those alert news hounds
apparently even comb the classified ad pages of area weeklies looking
for the big story.
I was on deadline last week when I got a call from Matt Curry, the
Globe-News Assistant Regional Editor, asking if the classified ad in our
newspaper for a jacket lost at a recent football game here was actually
mine. The ad, w'hich had at that point received no response, was indeed
one I posted in search of my waterproof Goretex jacket. That’s the
techno-w'onder that I wear to the games whenever it threatens to rain
or snow...unless our opponents’ school colors happen to be green or
purple, in w'hich case, I leave it in the car and soak up water like a sponge.
Not to be a name-dropper, but yes, I know the Matt Curry. I tell all
my friends that I know Matt Curry. At least, that’s w'hat I told Matt,
and he seemed pleased with the notion. To tell you the truth, Matt’s
phone calls are so frequently entertaining that I’ll even talk to him when
I’m on deadline and sweating bullets over the column I haven’t gotten
written.
But w'hat I W'on’t do is take the bait Matt Curry slyly offered when
he said, referring to the possible theft of my jacket, “Gee, doesn’t it
kinda’ shake your faith in small towns?”
Nope. I won’t go there, Matt. Maybe that jacket w-asn’t stolen.
Maybe it was just borrowed for a few weeks.
And sure enough, my faith w'as rewarded. Folks all over town read
Matt’s “Regional Notebook” reporting the loss of that jacket. Many
expressed their concern. A few' offered replacements—among them,
Mitch Ashley, who stopped me before the game in Stratford to say he
would donate his waterproof camouflage hunting jacket should I need
it.
That offer was a little suspect, I’ll admit. Sideline duty is hazardous
enough, and the thought of becoming less visible to any 250-pound
tackle w'ho suddenly comes charging in my direction frankly had little
appeal for me. But I’m sure Mitch’s gesture was a kind-hearted and
noble one.
Some disgruntled—and frankly quite cynical—Daily News readers
grumbled about w'hat a slow' news week it must have been in Amarillo
for them to have devoted so much space to my plight. They were even
less impressed when a libel suit filet! against me and The Record, won
us further notoriety in the area daily. They who shall remain nameless
w'ere downright mean when the recovery of that jacket garnered yet
another headline yesterday.
So for the sake of journalistic accuracy, I’ll just issue this disclaimer:
I did not solicit the publicity about my missing jacket, nor did I seek out
a law'suit to enhance my name recognition quotient in the Panhandle.
That might surprise some of you, but it’s true.
The fact is, Matt Curry just has a newsman’s curiosity and a slightly
twisted sense of humor.
But darned if he didn’t bring that jacket back home. Melanie Pittman
also stopped me at Friday night’s football game—who wasn't
there?—and told me she had found the jacket and seen the story, and
could now return it to its owner.
So thanks to my friend Matt Curry, and to Melanie Pittman, I’ll be
wearing that green and purple Goretex jacket with the zip-in goosedown
liner on the sidelines at tomorrow night’s bi-district contest in Pampa
if the National \V eather Service doesn’t change its mind about the* snow
w'e’re supposed to get.
111 be wearing a big old Wildcat grin, too, when our boys beat the
Bucks and head for the next round of the playoffs.
I won’t be wearing the silver earring I lost on the visitor’s sidelines
in Stratford last Friday...but then, that’s another story. Right, Matt?
| HIS IS PROGRESS? In th/ase oft!
I him into debt in the 1970s. We made h
case of the farmer, first we ran
him into debt in the 1970s. We made him dependent on
credit and chemicals in the 1980s. Then we exposed him to
global competition in the 1990s and replaced the local bankers
with executives from Minneapolis, Chicago, New York and Los
Angeles....As the independent farmer goes, so goes the small
JIM CULLEN in The Progressive Populist
towns.
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Ezzell, Nancy & Brown, Laurie Ezzell. The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 107, No. 46, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 13, 1997, newspaper, November 13, 1997; Canadian, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth521023/m1/2/: accessed June 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Hemphill County Library.