Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and opportunistic public servants, government agencies now have carte blanche to operate in secret for as long as this crisis persists—and perhaps even longer.
On March 13, Governor Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster, which—along with limiting visitations to nursing homes and urging Texans not to go to work if they are sick—lifted “any order or rule of a state agency that would in any way prevent, hinder, or delay necessary action in coping with this disaster.” Some of those waivers seemed sensible, such as a moratorium on fines for Texans who don’t register their vehicle on time, or a kibosh on standardized testing in public schools.
But among the temporarily lifted regulations were a handful regarding two cornerstone government transparency laws in Texas. One of them, the Public Information Act, gives citizens the right to obtain records held by the government in a (generally) timely fashion. The second, the Open Meetings Act, mandates that agencies give advance notice of meetings and allow for public attendance. The statutes are part of a suite of open government laws, including ethics and campaign finance rules, enacted by the Legislature in the early 1970s.
