Sunshine Week is being observed in Georgia and throughout the country this week, and it has nothing to do with the ball of fire in the sky.

Sunshine, in its context here, refers to open government, which Congress and the Georgia legislature are busy trying to shut out from the general public.

The fight in Georgia for open records began more than half a century ago. Progress was slow. Fortunately, Georgia had some governors along the way who believed that it was in the best interest of state government to keep the public informed and to make government meetings open and records available to the public upon request.

The state’s open records and open meetings laws (commonly called the Sunshine Laws) evolved over a period of time and it has served government and the public well. Efforts were made in the present session of the legislature to adopt laws that would have permitted government/private enterprises to be entered into and finalized before the public had any idea what was going on.

The excuse for this behind-the-scenes chicanery was that it was necessary for the state to grow industrially and to create jobs. Sometimes jobs are less important than knowing what your government is doing, and this may be such an instance.

The federal government is moving toward more secret government, using the Patriot Act as a crutch to deny the public information about what is going on.

We applaud members of Congress who have spoken out against secrecy for the sake of secrecy.

What we need is more open government, not more secrecy.

Hopefully, this nationwide observance of Sunshine Week will awaken citizens who have been unaware that their rights are being taken away from them and will spur them to let their representatives in the legislature and Congress know that they are not happy about it.