Sunshine Week
in Novi, Michigan

3/16/08

This week is Sunshine Week, a week dedicated by a group of newspaper editors to recognize open government and freedom of the press. But it's also about people having the right to public information.

In Novi, we've come a long way in the past decade. Just ten years ago, we had to file a Freedom of Information Act request and pay the city to bring you Novi City Council minutes. Today, that information is readily available online.

In fact, you can now watch those meetings online in real time from anywhere, or even watch parts of the meetings that interest you later and make up your own mind about the issues, rather than having to read about it through someone else's eyes.

The advent of the Internet greatly enhanced this process during the past ten years. Today, you can go online and find just about anything in Novi. And of course you can visit this website which pulls together all area media as it relates to the Novi area.

There is still room for improvement however. For example, it's still not easy to get information about how Novi's sports teams are doing, a point we raised last month here. But overall, Novi has gone from a closed to open city in the past decade and it's now easy to find most information online. And if you can't find what you're looking for online, there are plenty of people at the city, library, and our schools who will help you find what you're looking for.

We the People are pleased that we now live in such an open town. These changes are due to the respectful leadership of people like David Landry, Kim Capello, Lou Csordas, Rick Helwig, Clay Pearson and Peter Dion - your civic leaders who spearheaded increased openness in recent years.

Thomas Jefferson would be pleased to know such leaders are around 200 years after he famously explained he'd rather live in a community without government, than in a community without newspapers.