Over a three week period from mid-July to early August, representatives of the Center for Michigan, the Michigan Press Association, the Mackinac Center and the American Civil Liberties Union are conducting public panel discussions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Open Meetings Act (OMA).
Both statutes were intended to enable closer public scrutiny of government activity. However, over the years both have been watered down in some instances and ignored in others. There have been a number of legislative initiatives to reform FOIA and OMA recently, but nothing came of them. It's widely thought that greater citizen involvement is necessary to bring about meaningful change.
A press release announcing the panel discussions said, "Our state has
valuable tools for holding public servants accountable but those tools
are useless if people don’t know about them or don’t know how to use
them."
The first such meeting was in Jackson. The second will be in Grand Rapids on the Northwood University campus on July 24.
The Traverse Area District Library in Traverse City will host the third discussion on August 1, and the fourth will be on August 7 in Troy at the Northwood University campus there.
All are set to start at 6:00 p.m. and are scheduled to end around 8:00 p.m.
If you count yourself among the 10 percent who get things done in your community, your attendance at one of these panel discussions should be very beneficial.
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