Secrecy Watch
How Much Does the Public Have a Right to Know?
By Gil Brady, 7-25-07
JACKSON, Wyo. – With a regularity approaching tyranny, the Center for Public Integrity recently expanded its litany of “Fs” Wyoming has received for transparency in government.
This time, it was the Wyoming Supreme Court and the office of the Cowboy state’s centrist Democratic governor, Dave Freudenthal, who got the low marks, according to the editorial ”Another ‘F’ for Wyoming” by veteran capitol beat reporter Joan Barron of the Casper Star-Tribune.
Last month, in an editorial calling for Vice-President Dick Cheney to resign, I theorized that the Veep’s obsessive penchant for secrecy and disdain for the meddling press was a byproduct of cutting his political teeth in Wyoming.
Then again, it could just be that because the Veep thinks 9/11 turned America into Rome that means he gets to be Ceasar without the cool ass Laurence Olivieresque haircut.
Regardless, the problem of night swallowing up daylight in our state runs deeper than a couple of high-profile politicos playing hide the ball – excessive secrecy permeates nearly every rung of Wyoming public life right down to the county and local level.
But the biggest problem is that because it’s our job, only reporters and journalists appear to understand that there’s a problem. If enough citizens understood how much of the free flow of information is routinely hidden from public view, there might be a greater outcry than the occasional bitchy rumblings from the nosy press corps, which are so easy to dismiss.
Over the next few weeks and months, look for this column, which aims to expand upon this far-off Beltway report and cite specific instances, issues and ongoing news stories suffering from a paucity of sunshine.
Until then, I offer one long forgot but still unanswered example:
“If Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s tram (both the old and new one yet to be installed) traverse over public forest lands, why have they not had to release the findings of their high-tech and highly classified study on their old tram—and other dynamic mechanisms and structures related to it—conducted by Doppelmayr CTEC?”
When I asked a JHMR spokesperson two years ago to release the report, they told me: “No.”
“If the tram is safe, why not release the report?” I asked.
“Because we don’t have to,” the spokesperson said.
Question: Does the public still have a right to know? Or, is this old water long under the bridge?
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In discussing the contempt Wyoming state government has for its citizens and their right to know--its contempt for the public interest--one could well start with the Wyoming G&F;Department and its total capitulation to the livestock industry on serious issues of wildlife management, especially with wolves and elk feedgrounds. G&F;has been consistently lying to the public about wolves and Wyoming's elk populations for years, and it has been covering up the fact that the Stockgrowers Association is dictating elk management policy throughout the state, particularly elk feedground management in northwestern Wyoming.
The Stockgrower's Association goal in dictating elk management is to protect ranchers' control of grass, keeping it away from elk by shunting them onto the feedgrounds each winter, as well as to protect the Stockgrower's status as an oligarchy with full control over the G&F;Department and other state agencies to protect rancher's control of land use and wildlife management policy in the State.
Some sunshine on this pathological relationship between G&F;and the Stockgrowers from someone other than me would be most welcome.
Giddup...