“We the people” is the opening phrase of the U.S. Constitution that sets the tone for how our nation and national government saw itself. It signifies that all Americans from president, to members of Congress to small-town mayors and average citizens have equal access to our government.
That too means that citizens, regardless of status or station, should be able to see what any government agency is doing.
Sunday, March 15, to Saturday, March 21, was Sunshine Week, when news agencies around the country celebrated wins that have made government more transparent and to also warn readers and viewers about government attempts to hide public information.
Sunshine Week 2020 coincided with the busiest news week in a generation. That fact is not lost on any journalist. Newspaper reporters, radio correspondents, television reporters and online journalists ramped up our output this week, covering the news reports about outbreaks, quarantines, closure orders and the shortages of ventilators, surgical masks and protective equipment for our doctors, nurses, paramedics and first responders.
It is the right of every American citizen to know what our elected and appointed officials are doing. They work for salaries paid by our taxes in offices also paid for by tax dollars. By design, we should know how they are spending our tax dollars, whether it’s educating our children, fighting crime or fires in equipment we paid for, setting up statewide or nationwide programs or policies for our progeny or going to war on our behalf on foreign soil.
Excluding national security matters, every document produced by or stored by local, state and the federal government should be accessible at any time by members of the public, yet there are slews of state and federal laws to protect the public’s right to know.
During this COVID-19 crisis, National Public Radio journalists reported that several U.S. senators were assuring the public everything was fine while telling donors to prepare for economic devastation.
Following up NPR’s story, journalists from Politico began looking into the stock trades of lawmakers, which are forced by law to be made public within 30 days. Reporters discovered that U.S. Sen. Richard Burr [R-N.C.], the lawmaker highlighted in the NPR story, sold between $628,000 and $1.72 million in stock after classified briefings about how badly the COVID-19 outbreak could harm the economy, but before the public was warned.
Politico reporters discovered that U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler [R-Ga.] and her husband, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, sold at least $355,000 in January and $890,000 in February, then bought stock in a workplace telecommuting business, knowing millions of quarantined Americans would be using its software to work from home.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein [D-Calif.], sold at least $500,000 in shares of Allogene Therapeutics, a California biotechnology company, and at least $1 million in Allogene stock. U.S. Sen. James Inhofe [R.-Okla.] sold at least $180,000 in stocks in January and at least $50,000 in stock in an asset management company on Feb. 20, four days before the stock market crashed.
In the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Rep. Susan Davis [D-Calif.], sold thousands of dollars of stock in cruise lines while U.S. Rep. Scott Peters* [D-Calif.] sold up to $1 million in municipal bonds, both after classified briefings.
Dogged reporters searching through boring financial and tax records discovered these abuses of power by lawmakers who we thought we serving us, the public, but were instead using the power of their office to make money for themselves.
Such wins for transparency can only come if the public makes it clear that transparency is a fundamental facet of government and voters will not stand for any politician or official who tries to obfuscate and thereby deceive the public.
More often than not, local agencies freely provide journalists and the public with records we request because it’s easy to be forthright with the media and the public. Perhaps in part, it’s because filing a formal open records law request will only delay the inevitable and, in the interim, embarrass the official and department who tried to deny the request because when American citizens don’t get public records we are entitled to, we are rarely quiet about it.
That being said, no government officials should seek to hide information from the public. They should demand transparency more strongly than we do because it affects their job directly.
Remember that government records are your records — officials are merely the caretakers of what you already own. We are the government and the government is us.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
* We were contacted by MaryAnne Pintar, Chief of Staff for U.S. Rep. Scott Peters [D-52] and sent the following:
1) The sales were initiated prior to any briefing the Congressman received.
2) The briefing was an unclassified ALL member briefing. In no reference in any report that I have seen is this briefing ever referred to as classified. That is erroneous.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/watchdog/story/2020-03-24/davis-peters-report-sizable-stock-and-bond-sales-after-covid-19-briefing
MaryAnne Pintar
Chief of Staff
Rep. Scott Peters – CA-52
4350 Executive Drive, Suite 105
San Diego, CA 92121
p. 858-455-5550
From: Christopher Fox Graham <editor@larsonnewspapers.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2020 10:24 AM
To: Pintar, MaryAnne <MaryAnne.Pintar@mail.house.gov>
Subject: Re: article referencing Rep. Peters’ bond sales with accurate information
We’re happy to add this. We would like a official statement as to why you, as a federal employee, are cleaning up the political issues for a congressman outside his home district and his home state?
