We have a secrecy problem. This may seem odd to say during an era in which the most intimate details of individuals’ lives are on display. Yet government is moving behind closed doors, and this is definitely the wrong direction. In fact, I’m dismayed by how often public officials fight not to do the public’s business in public.

City and town councils regularly go into executive session to discuss “personnel issues” that might or might not truly need to be carried on outside public view. At the state level, lawmakers exempt themselves from public-records laws, underfund public watchdogs, and exempt lobbying expenditures from sunshine laws.

Meanwhile, contributors to federal campaigns increasingly manage to avoid disclosure of their political activities. Government contractors are not subject to most of the transparency rules that affect federal agencies. Federal inspectors general face constant efforts to limit their access to records. Routine information is classified and kept secret. Members of Congress increasingly rely on omnibus spending bills — which are put together behind closed doors by a handful of leaders and congressional staff with no public scrutiny.

Most notably, of course, secrecy extends to national security issues. There are some government secrets that are necessary to protect, and a balance has to be struck between protecting national security and openness. But those who favor secrecy should make their case in public and not rely on the old adage, “Trust me.”

Openness is not a panacea, but it makes good government more likely. Representative democracy depends on our ability to know what’s being done in our name. We cannot exercise the discriminating judgment required of citizens about politics, policies, and politicians if we do not know what they’re doing.

Nor is it possible to maintain the checks and balances required under our Constitution without openness and transparency. We have to shine a bright light on the actions of public officials so that it’s more likely they’ll act with integrity. Justice Louis Brandeis gave perhaps the most famous formulation of this requirement in his 1913 statement, “[S]unlight is said to be the best disinfectant.”

But Judge Damon Keith of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals put an exclamation point on the idea in a 2002 ruling that the government could not carry out secret deportation hearings without proving the need for secrecy. “Democracies,” he wrote, “die behind closed doors.”          

Lee Hamilton is director of the Center on Congress (www.centeroncongress.org) at Indiana University (IU), distinguished scholar at the IU School of Global and International Studies, and professor of practice at the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Hamilton, a Democrat, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years, representing a district in south central Indiana.