Editorial
We’re heading into the start of spring this week – the vernal equinox occurs on Friday, March 20 – when the sun crosses the celestial equator, signifying the beginning of longer days, more sunlight, warmer weather and a time of renewal. This is also, appropriately, Sunshine Week – March 15-21 – when those of us in the journalism business attempt to shine a bright light on openness in government by emphasizing the importance of allowing citizens to know what public servants are doing on their behalf.
Transparency in government is a cornerstone of our representative democracy. It’s what separates us from authoritarian governments that seek to conceal what they’re doing from their citizens. In our country, every citizen has the right and responsibility of staying informed about what their local, state and federal governments are doing.
As a community newspaper, one of our key objectives is to enlighten our readers with what our local governments are doing. Our reporters regularly attend meetings of our local governmental bodies and keep in close communication with elected officials and government administrators to keep you, our readers, informed.
This is the time of year when local governments are formulating budgets – essentially determining how tax dollars are going to be spent in the upcoming fiscal year. It is tedious work but vitally important. Local governments, especially in Virginia, are restricted in how they can raise revenues to pay for essential services such as education, law enforcement, fire protection, public utilities, and road maintenance.
There’s a limited amount of money and citizens have a right to know that it’s being spent wisely. Everyone wants low taxes but everyone also expects these basic public services to be provided. It’s a balancing act for our elected representatives to meet both of these objectives. We see it as our responsibility as a newspaper to report on how our elected representatives are carrying out these functions. Our readers should expect no less.
We do live in fraught times, when democratic ideals are under attack at the highest levels of government. Reliable, trusted media sources who can hold government officials accountable appear to be on the decline. The rise of social media, with its questionable sources of information proliferating in online public discourse, is making it increasingly difficult for citizens to know what they can believe about what government is doing.
Sunshine Week is an attempt to counter these threats to our most cherished ideals. Shining a bright light on what our governments are doing at all levels is vital to safeguarding the tenets of our representative democracy.
