Montana’s right to know is worth fighting for

This week is Sunshine Week, a celebration of our right to know what our government is doing. Observed nationally during the week of March 16 — coinciding with the birthday of James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution” — this week is an opportunity for all of us to encourage transparency and exercise our right to know.

Madison himself warned that “a popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy.” 

This year also marks the 60th anniversary of the most important federal transparency law, the federal Freedom of Information Act, which was signed by President Johnson on July 4, 1966. At a time when public trust in institutions is at its lowest, Sunshine Week is a call to remember why transparency matters and how to exercise your right to know.  

But more than idealistic quotes and federal laws, here in Montana we have one of the strongest transparency provisions in the country. Our right to know is embedded directly in our state Constitution, and is limited only by the need for individual privacy. We are the only state whose Legislature cannot restrict the right to know by statute alone. 

But 2025 tested our strong foundation. When Montana’s Legislative Services Division quietly adopted a policy withholding decades-old bill-drafting records — the so-called “junque files” that citizens and journalists had long relied on to understand who shaped legislation and how — a coalition of citizens and eight Montana news organizations sued. A district court judge restored access, writing that everyone involved had understood for 30 years that those records were public.  

The fights continued. The Montana Supreme Court recognized a new executive privilege exception to the right to know for the first time in our state’s history, a significant narrowing. The Legislature introduced bipartisan bills to strengthen transparency protections in response. Two were vetoed by the governor. Two others died in the Legislature. As Rep. Ed Stafman of Bozeman put it: “Government secrecy is where democracy goes to die.” 

These battles are not abstract. They determine whether you can find out why your school board voted the way it did, whether you can read the contract your county signed with an outside company and whether you can understand what a lobbyist told your state legislator before a vote. These are exactly the questions the right to know was built to answer, and exactly what secrecy is designed to prevent. 

The Montana Freedom of Information Hotline now receives more calls from ordinary citizens than from journalists, which tells us something important: Montanans know this right matters. They are using it. 

The good news is that Montana’s constitutional protection remains strong. Delegate Foster, one of the framers of our 1972 state Constitution, said at the constitutional convention: “The government will be better for it; the people will be the better because of it.” That remains true. But constitutional rights do not enforce themselves. Justice Louis Brandeis, whose 1913 line “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants” gave Sunshine Week its name, understood that transparency requires constant tending. So did our framers. So must we. 

This Sunshine Week, we invite you to exercise your right. File a public records request — we can help you at montanatransparencyproject.org. Attend a public meeting. Ask a question of your local government and take note of how they respond. Transparency is not a passive right. It belongs to you, but only if you claim it. 

Sunlight is ours to let in.

Caroline Bullock is secretary of the Montana Transparency Project.