Attorney and law professor Constance Van Kley says Montana has historically had one of the strongest constitutional rights to access government documents in the nation.
“I think that there has been a general belief that everything is public when you work for the state government, and that may be changing,” Van Kley said.
Lawmakers passed a bipartisan bill this year that would have put new restrictions on the ability of the governor to withhold certain documents from public access. That was in response to a state Supreme Court ruling this year that granted new power to the governor to claim so-called “executive privilege” over his communications with advisers.
Gov. Greg Gianforte vetoed that bill – and a separate measure that would have made state Supreme Court deliberations public, too. In both veto letters, Gianforte argued that the branches of government need a degree of privacy to effectively do their work.
Democratic Rep. Ed Stafman of Bozeman sponsored the bill that sought to check the governor’s powers.
“I think that government secrecy is where democracy goes to die,” he said.
Stafman argues the public needs unfiltered access to government communications to know who’s influencing policy proposals. He sponsored a separate bill that would have protected public access to legislative documents with that information – so called junque files. That bill died in the House.
“By making secret the junque files, making secret the governor’s files, the winners are the lobbyists, out-of-state corporations, moneyed influencers who can secretly get their way,” Stafman said.
A district court this year ruled that lawmaker communications about bill drafts must remain public. Attorneys for the Legislature appealed that decision to the state Supreme Court, which has yet to issue its opinion.
