Flint’s water crisis might not have hit the national news until late 2015, but using the state’s Freedom of Information Act, along with citizen and city sources in Flint, Flint Journal and MLive.com reporter Ron Fonger uncovered the problems months earlier. His use of FOIA to gain access to records when the first wave of complaints was anecdotal demonstrates the importance of FOIA to journalists and members of the public.

Sadly, many in the state legislature seem to prefer limiting FOIA access rather than promoting and increasing access and smoothing the way for Michigan’s citizens to keep a close eye on their government at all levels. That’s why it’s important to promote national Sunshine Week, today through next Saturday.

In late February, the House Natural Resources Committee adopted the H-9 substitute to HB 4540. This amendment to the state’s FOIA law would change the current Freedom of Information Act to add that records and information relating to the “confidentiality, integrity, or availability of information systems” are exempt and specifically state that cybersecurity plans, assessments, and vulnerabilities are exempt. Although the provision also states these types of records and information are not exempt in certain circumstances, the bill would make it far harder for the public to gain access to important information.

The H-9 substitute also would add an exemption for information that would “identify or provide a means of identifying a person that may, as a result of disclosure of the information, become a victim of a cybersecurity incident or that would disclose a person’s cybersecurity plans or cybersecurity-related practices, procedures, methods, results, organizational information system infrastructure, hardware, or software.”

Giving private entities the legal power to hide in government records what could be vital information for the public to know is an abdication of the state’s fiduciary duty to its citizens. Yet the effort goes on and on with only a small handful of groups, such as the Michigan Coalition for Open Government (MiCOG), actively opposing those efforts.

The state Senate is currently discussing SB 634 that would block public access to the video collected by police body cameras. The House has been discussing blocking access to police body camera videos in HB 4234 since early in 2015.

MiCOG maintains that such recordings are no different than other types of police records, including arrest reports. To exempt video recordings creates an undue and inappropriate level of government secrecy.

And it directly contradicts the primary purpose and public policy of the state’s Freedom of Information Act: to provide the public with the ability to evaluate how government officials, in this case police officers, are performing their official, public duties. An appropriate level of transparency is essential in allowing public oversight of police activities. The public has a right to more – not less – accountability from their public safety personnel.

There are many more determined efforts to limit FOIA than expand it. SB 716 and House Bill 4283 are rare exceptions. They would expand coverage of FOIA to include the governor as well as the Legislature. Currently these offices are exempt from the Michigan FOIA law.

The intent of FOIA when it was passed in 1976 was to guarantee access to the public to observe how effectively governments at the local, county and state levels were doing their jobs. Now more than ever, as evidenced by the water crisis in Flint, FOIA is a vital tool for citizens to do exactly that.

Editor’s note: Jane Briggs-Bunting is president of the Michigan Coalition for Open Government. She also is the former director of the Michigan State University School of Journalism and the journalism program at Oakland University, a media attorney and founding director of the Great Lakes Student Press Law Clinic.