By Kelley Shannon
Executive Director
Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas
We Texans are fortunate when it comes to access to government information.
Correction. We were fortunate.
For more than 40 years, Texas’ open records law was one of the nation’s strongest. The Texas Public Information Act, originating during a time of scandal in the early 1970s, presumes all government records are available to citizens, unless there’s a specific exception preventing release of the document.