New era of government transparency? Indiana's public access counselor tackles backlog

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3 days ago

When Hoosiers have questions about whether their public officials are following the state's public records and open meeting laws, they can turn to Indiana's public access counselor to investigate the situation on their behalf.
However, that nonpartisan state agency has been engulfed in a period of transition following a state law limiting its scope. That change caused staff and institutional knowledge to drain out of the office, and Hoosiers' questions were largely left unanswered in the meantime.
Now, with Gov. Mike Braun's selection of Jennifer Ruby as Indiana's next public access counselor, the office is poised to regain stability a year after the law took effect and following 16 months of understaffing. Ruby told IndyStar she is making progress rebuilding her staff, updating guidance and responding to the backlog of constituent questions.
"Anytime you have a goal that's really hard and a long way away, you've just got to try to keep focusing on what your end goal is," she said. "And my end goal is to get this office in better shape."
Braun has repeatedly said government transparency and constituent services will be two important pillars of his administration — and are both why the public access counselor was created.
'Transparency is essential and the PAC plays a big role in making sure our state government is providing that transparency," the governor's spokesperson, Griffin Reid, told IndyStar in a statement.
Those who rely on the office will be watching closely to see how long it takes the office to get caught up and how constrained Ruby is by the changes to the law.
The public access counselor is responsible for both educating officials about the public's right to information and answering Hoosiers' questions about the state's public access law.
"Government, especially at the local level, can be confusing to folks who are new to engaging with their local officials," said Luke Britt, the previous public access counselor. "Access and engagement go hand in hand, and so just being there as a resource was my number one priority."
Members of the public, journalists and government employees can ask Ruby's office questions about how to interpret the state's Access to Public Records Act and the Open Door Law, also known as sunshine laws.
People can also submit complaints to the public access counselor if they feel there is a potential that those laws were violated. The office will then engage in an investigatory process that culminates in an advisory opinion interpreting how the state's laws apply to specific situations.
All advisory opinions are published on the public access counselor's website.
The state legislature curtailed the public access counselor's powers in 2023, so the office could only consider two sources — Indiana's public access law "as plainly written" and court opinions — when deciding on public complaints.
Lawmakers disagreed with how Britt, the previous counselor, was interpreting the law. Amendment author Sen. Aaron Freeman, R-Indianapolis, said at the time that Britt had "some very liberal interpretations of the statute."
They especially drew issue with Britt's opinion that Hamilton East Public Library board members violated the Open Door Law amidst a high-profile reshuffling in response to a controversial book relocation policy.
"Once that legislation took place ... if it was a complaint about a subjective area of the law or an ambiguity, all I could do was make a rote recitation of the law, and I don't think that's necessarily helpful," Britt said.
Ruby said she is navigating what the office will look like under the new law and how to weigh the need for transparency with the letter of the law.
"There is going to be a balance because we're supposed to broadly interpret so that there's openness and transparency," Ruby said. "There's going to be some learning here as far as what works and what doesn't."
Another question is whether the thousands of prior opinions, which date back to when the office was created in 1999, can be used as precedent.
If a court used a counselor's opinion to make a ruling, she said, that advisory opinion has legal standing. Where there isn't case law, she said, she'll have to evaluate whether previous opinions still stand and if she can come to the same conclusion using the plain text or other court cases.
"There's a lot of times that you're building something or you're reviewing something legally and you can come at it from a different direction, you can still come to the same conclusion," she said.
On whether her office will become ensnared in political tensions as it had in the past, Ruby said she'll rely on her background as a mediator to work through and discuss her decisions. Everything must stem back to something in Indiana code or case law, which she said provides evidence that the office is not engaging in partisan politics.
"The law will potentially tick off one side or the other," she said. "But if I'm following the law, they're going to understand exactly why I made the decision that I made."
Zachary Baiel, president of the Indiana Coalition for Open Government, is among Hoosiers who have expressed frustrations about the time it takes to hear back from the office.
Still, Baiel is giving the Braun administration the benefit of the doubt since his term is still young and it took the time to find a person suited for the job. Government moves slowly, he said, which means staffing vacancies take longer to fill, and thus, longer to remedy issues.
For people who have sent questions or complaints to her office and haven't heard back, Ruby said her office is working chronologically unless there is an emerging legal case that would need to jump the queue.
"We will get to you when we can," she said.
The office was understaffed for about 16 months and without an official leader since February. Ruby was working through requests alone until a paralegal joined her staff last week.
The hardest part so far, she said, is dealing with the office's negative perception that's developed as people wait for answers.
"The thing I like the least is letting people down," she said. "I know this office needs to be more actively engaged with the public, and it's hard to do that when there's only one of you."
She said she is working to close out complaints filed in December, January and February. Notices will begin to go out for complaints filed in March and April. She plans to write her first advisory opinion "very soon."
By the end of September, Ruby said, she hopes her office will have made a large dent in the backlog. And by the end of the year, she's optimistic that the office will be up to date.
This year has been busier than last. She said there are at least 95 complaints filed so far this year, compared to about 88 that Britt responded to in all of 2024.
"I think we're going to have a lot more this year to get through," she said. "We're going to have plenty of work to do."
Britt was Indiana's longest-serving public access counselor and gained name recognition for his public education and accessibility. He announced he was stepping down in February after undefined.
"If folks have that resource they can go to just for general questions about government or government transparency, that's a good thing," he said. "I always took that counselor word in the title quite literally."
Ruby said she has similar motivations. She emphasized it was important to her to return to public service after 20 years running her estate and succession planning practice. She missed knowing she's helping people each day she works, she said.
In her 15 years working in state and local government, Ruby often interacted with public access law. She worked in strategic planning, litigation and policy roles at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, New Mexico Environment Department and the city of Indianapolis.
She's fulfilled records requests, ensured public meeting rules were followed and interpreted what could be discussed in private executive sessions.
"I've dealt with (public access laws) in those ways," she said. "This (job) is just a lot deeper into that."
The legislature made the public access counselor's job more difficult by limiting their ability to interpret statutes that are often broad, Baiel said. He is especially curious to see Ruby's first advisory opinion, which he believes will tell more about how she approaches open access laws.
"That's the proof of any public access counselor," he said. "They all have different writing styles. They all have different sympathies. ... So what's Jennifer's (first opinion) going to look like, especially in light of the changes at the Indiana code level?"
Ruby's goal is to begin conducting regular trainings so members of the public can better understand their rights in plain language. She said education is a critical role of her office and one she intends to more intensely pursue when they make it through the backlog.
"We've been so underwater that we're just not there yet," she said.
The USA TODAY Network - Indiana's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana's new public access counselor tackles backlog