Beware of Efforts To Curtail Requests

Tony McDonald, the author of "Beware of Efforts To Curtail Requests" written in the blog Empower Texans is a licensed and practicing attorney, as well as General Counsel to the blog Empower Texans. McDonald explains to Texans that 'Sunshine Week' had recently passed which is an initiative to remind Americans of the importance of government transparency. He argues that in order for the people to gain better control of the government, that all measures to set back transparency become dead on arrival. With that being said, bureaucrats and lobbyists whom are tax funded are complaining and do not believe in open record laws. These government officials actually believe there should be a charge to the Texas people, just to submit an open record request which is supposed to act as a form of deterrent to what these government officials like to call, "vexatious requestors." These type of requestors seem to be higher, especially when there might by controversial information that they are trying to bring to light. McDonald also goes on to explain that more questions are asked when the citizens feel that the government is being slow to answer requests. With this plan in action, the bureaucrats think that they might just outlast the requestors for months at a time, hoping that they will back off at some point. McDonald feels that transparency makes Texas government stronger, and that the requestors are doing a civic duty by caring to ask questions. He argues that we should work to clear obstacle, and not to create them. I believe that McDonald's argument is correct, and that we should all help out more to ask questions, whether they are annoying or not. There is no reason that government officials should be hiding any records from the people. Doing so creates a lot of distrust in the Texan people. I believe McDonald when he says that we could make Texas stronger with transparency.