Ohio attorney general, others mark Sunshine Week

SANDUSKY — Ohio's attorney general, Dave Yost, is celebrating Sunshine Week by releasing the 2019 edition of the "Yellow Book," a sunshine law manual that offers an up-to-date guide to Ohio's public records and open meetings laws.The manual is updated every year to reflect changes in and law and court rulings. For a downloadable copy and other information, go to ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Sunshine.By law, Ohio governments must make public records available to anyone who asks for them. And all meetings by governing bodies such as city councils must be in public, except for certain limited exceptions, such as personnel matters.Sunshine Week, a celebration hosted every year to mark access to public information, is observed across the U.S. this week by a variety of organizations, including public interest groups and journalism bodies such as the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press."Most days, what happens at city hall or the county courthouse has much more impact on your life than the latest installment of outrage from Washington, D.C.," Yost said. "Our ability as a people to stay informed and hold local politicians accountable hinges on the freedom to access government information through public records and open meetings."Public records laws can be used by anyone.Ohio has a relatively strong open records law, and public officials in Ohio are expected to train on how to comply with the law.The Register often uses the law to obtain records that strengthen the newspaper's reporting efforts to inform the public.Here are a few examples of public records requests made by the Register's reporters and editors. This is only a sampling of the many requests made by the paper.• The paper recently obtained financial documents that shed light on the city of Sandusky's annual budget.• Erie County provided statistics on the caseload of the local public defender's office and the amount of money provided by the Erie County commissioners to cover those costs.• When a corrections officer died in a fiery vehicle crash in Huron County last year, the Register obtained reports from the Ohio Highway Patrol and the state fire marshal's office.• The Register obtained public records from the city of Fremont in 2018 to learn about performance issues by a former officer who later ran for the Ohio House.• The paper obtained a request for proposals from the Mental Health and Recovery Board of Erie and Ottawa counties to learn more about the agency's plans to buy a branch bank building and turn it into agency offices.• A public records request was used last year to check the personnel file of a doctor at the Erie County Health Department who later was fired.• A public records request obtained the personnel file in 2017 for a fiscal officer in Milan who was fired.Ohio attorney general Dave Yost.