Democracy is supposed to be government "for the people, by the people."
Too often, though, information that details what our government is doing is hidden. The Freedom of Information Act allows citizens to request public documents, yet even that's a game.
You need to be surgical in requests or you may not be able to afford it. Some of this is due to an entire industry that harvests information from public records, and then turns around and sells it. Political pollsters, debt collectors, marketing agencies all are willing and able to "pay to play" to get this information which is compiled into huge databases -- which can unfairly burden public agencies.
This makes it harder for the free press or average citizens to access public information. Too often, "public servants" view all these inquiries as intrusive.
Secrecy has been traditional for private industry with too-big-to-fail corporate boards voting to shift profits from individual shareholders and provide kingly CEO compensation packages or fund lobbying for favorable legislation.
Today these privatized practices have trickled down and have been embraced by "public servants" -- whether this is a member of Congress taking gifts and perks or local government jobs providing better pay and benefits than those typical for regular workers. Either scenario makes it hard to follow the money or determine why certain decisions were made, and who actually benefits. Certainly not taxpayers, your average citizen or stockholder.
How can you tell when this is happening? In the public sector, it's supposed to be FOIA that levels the playing field.
Average citizens generally cannot afford the time and money it takes to extract what should be transparent and readily available to the public. Even when they do, government officials often still try to side step transparency and accountability, and create obstacles.
So when questions about a trend of serious mistakes by the Montgomery County Registrar's office were elevated, our government "for the people, by the people" responded by saying it couldn't examine any purported problems without the original documents being presented. Really? FOIA allows access to public documents and you can pay for copies -- but no citizen will be able to waltz out the door with original records.
What good are laws if they are not enforced equitably? What good is government if it becomes ineffective and unresponsive for the good of citizens?