This ABC News article titled Christie Aide is Latest to Use Private Emails seems to reaffirm what those of us using Idaho’s Public Records Law have long known:  Public records laws are useless without compliance by public officials.   The same can be said of open meeting laws.  Officials wanting to avoid compliance with the intent of the laws can easily do so with little risk.

Passing both public records laws and open meeting laws allow legislators to puff themselves up and point with pride at their effort, but those same legislators render the laws impotent by failing to require and fund timely public enforcement and failing to provide meaningfully deterrent penalties.

As the ABC story revealed, a newspaper which had dutifully submitted a public records request for the damning Christie aide emails a month earlier had been told they didn’t exist.