Jefferson City, Mo. (Associated Press) – In the face of threats to public officials, state lawmakers across the United States have stepped up efforts to protect the personal lives of judges, police chiefs, elected officials and other public officials.
The measures, which are generally supported by lawmakers across the country, add an extra layer of secrecy that makes it more difficult to determine whether a public official is following residency rules or paying taxes.
The initiative to remove some information from the public light comes despite the fact that many governments are becoming more transparent in their meetings, even spread through the internet in a trend that originated during the pandemic, when many People were forbidden to step out of their homes.
Then the so-called “Semana de la Luz”, the annual review of laws on public information that runs from Sunday to Saturday, has different opinions about the transparency of the official.
While more access to official meetings “the government generally becomes more secretive every year,” said David Coulier, a journalism professor at the University of Arizona who has been tracking how the government complies with rules on access to official information. public information
According to Cuillier’s research, people who ask the federal government receive the information only about a fifth of the time, compared to about 50% more than once.
Information requests under state law are generally more successful, Coulier said, but “every year the legislature adds and accelerates the number of exceptions.”
In the case of Aadhaar, several exceptions can be seen as fair and justifiable. The move to keep judges’ home addresses private is a good example.
In 2012, a man dressed as a maternity dress entered her home, killing her 20-year-old son and wounding her husband, horrified Judge Salas Esther. New Jersey officials approved a law that year that exempted from public viewing the private speeches of judges, prosecutors, and sitting officials who receive or receive benefits. The measure, named the Daniels Law, named after the judge’s late son, allows public officials to ask individuals or companies to remove their home addresses from government pages.
While some states already had similar laws, the New Jersey case inspired action elsewhere. Most states now have laws that prevent the government from publishing the home email addresses of at least some public employees, especially judges, according to research by Jody Gill, a journalism professor at Southern Connecticut State University.
___ This story was contributed by Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, and Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
