Britt focused on ‘good government’ with transparency

Tuesday, March 3, 2020
Indiana Public Access Counselor Luke Britt speaks on the challenges of holding elected officials accountable during Monday evening’s Community Conversation.
Banner Graphic/Brand Selvia

John Adams, the second president of the United States, said, “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right and a desire to know.”

For an informed community, a healthy government is an open government. It allows everyone to understand how their interests or issues are being addressed. Open door and public access laws help ensure this dialogue.

To give an up-front perspective of his day to day and the importance of transparency, Indiana Public Access Counselor Luke Britt spoke to a small audience during the latest Community Conversation.

Monday evening’s edition was sponsored by the Greencastle League of Women Voters, the Putnam County Public Library and the Greater Greencastle Chamber of Commerce.

Britt was appointed Indiana’s public access counselor in 2013 by then-Gov. Mike Pence, and is the longest-serving PAC since the office was established by the Indiana General Assembly in 1999.

He previously served as operations manager for the Indiana State Department of Health and as an attorney for the Indiana Department of Child Services, after beginning his career in private practice in Johnson County.

“No topic is off-limits to me, as long as it’s in my lane,” Britt began. “I consider my role as a blessing. As a lawyer, I find it a great thing because I get to interact with many different facets of government and people.”

Britt earned his undergraduate degree in journalism from Franklin College in 2002 and an M.B.A. from the University of Indianapolis in 2015. He earned his J.D. from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law in 2005, and is admitted to the Indiana bar.

He regularly guest-lectures on journalism, civics and law at Indiana universities and colleges, and was even an undergraduate intern at the Banner Graphic.

“I am mainly focused on good government,” he said. “I believe that transparency breeds accountability, and accountability in turn breeds good government.”

However, he added that anyone who “just shows up” to a council or school board meeting contributes to this mission. He sees his perspective in being thankful that community members would care about local government.

However, his clout as the public access counselor is not free from criticism. Indeed, he shared that he had recently received a confrontational phone call from someone who disagreed with his opinion.

“After that call, I thought about how I could’ve made my point better, or how I could’ve deescalated the situation,” Britt said. “My intent is always to be instructive, and I don’t go in with the intent to browbeat my colleagues.”

The public access counselor’s office in Indianapolis works out of a small space with three staffers, which Britt said was “a sizable pulpit for what we do.”

He said his workload is mainly separated into three parts. One-third is going out into communities and educating about public access and open door laws.

The next third is responding to requests for assistance from various governmental entities.

The last portion is addressing what Britt called “adversarial complaint processes,” challenges which are to be worked through between the office and the courts.

Britt said the PAC office gets about 7,500 calls a year, and that the overarching goal is to be as approachable as possible with each consultation.

When asked what it took to do his job as a public access counselor, Britt reflected on his experience as a former journalist about holding elected officials and government entities accountable, and how he has had to adapt his attitudes.

“It took me a while to find what tone I wanted to strike, and that is still evolving,” he said.

Britt acknowledged that the premises between open door laws and public access laws were different. The former is more concerned about an entity’s actions, while the latter deals mostly with documents, which he said details their actual business.

The overarching philosophy, he said, is the presumption that everything falling under such business should be open.

Asked what he considered to be his most challenging case, Britt pointed to a controversial opinion he released in 2015. He ruled that the University of Notre Dame’s police force had violated public access laws by withholding records.

“We don’t have secret police in Indiana,” Britt said matter-of-factly, relating that the implications were that any such educational institution’s police should report the same as municipal law enforcement.

More on the local level, Britt spoke on what would be considered official business, especially when it comes to social media. He said that he has been outspoken about elected officials using (and weaponizing) these platforms and electronic mail to get around the law.

“There are certain parameters for what’s appropriate online,” he said. In other words, what can become public record and what is not. This issue delves into what is considered political business versus public business.

Britt said that members of a political party with a majority influence can come together and discuss their own ideologies and values on issues. It is another issue if they discuss how they’re going to vote on a certain measure.

Regardless, Britt suggested that members of both major political parties can, and have, skirted or blatantly violated the law.

For him, it is still essential for communities, from local newspaper reporters to the involved citizen, to hold the feet of all elected officials and their entities to the fire.

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