The decision to release thousands of documents in the Larry Nassar case to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office came about quickly.

The agenda item was added an hour before the meeting of the Michigan State University Board of Trustees, according to the Detroit News.

Trustees cited a need for “healing” on behalf of the victims and the need to rebuild trust in the university by way of “transparency, accountability, justice and truth.”

Nessel’s office quickly lauded the decision, calling it “long-owed.” Long, as Nasser was convicted five years ago, and the choice to keep the investigative documents shrouded in darkness has endured that long.

“I am encouraged to see the MSU Board of Trustees finally make the right decision on a long-promised, and long-delayed, measure of transparency,” Nessel’s statement read.

Yet her office is fighting transparency on a number of fronts when it comes to its own investigations.

Close to home, the cases of those accused of plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer during the COVID-19 pandemic are resolved — Shawn Fix and Brian Higgins accepted plea agreements with prosecutors and have been sentenced; Eric Molitor, Michael Null and William Null were found not guilty by a jury. The former defendants faced state terrorism-related charges in Antrim County after prosecutors accused them of participating in a plot to kidnap Whitmer from her summer home near Elk Rapids.

Prosecutors first argued that releasing discovery material to the public could taint the jury pool and infringe on fair trial rights — an argument Nessel repeated during an April visit to Traverse City for an open government seminar.

But that story changed when the protection order was lifted:

“As the litigation concluded, it is appropriate for the Department to seek the return of the discovery so as to protect the personal identifying information of people that were interviewed during the investigation,” said a spokesman from Nessel’s office.

Here’s the thing — transparency is not a gift, and the AG office is not Santa Claus, deciding who is naughty or nice: The nice ones get a Freedom Of Information Act response and the naughty ones get a flat stocking.

Rather, transparency is a right of the governed public, and a fundamental — and functional — part of keeping a democracy working. Instead of making righteous transparency claims, our state officials need to examine their own embrace of transparency to determine what list they’d be on.

– Traverse City Record-Eagle