First of two parts

Ratepayers of the North Attle boro Electric Department sure ly have a right to know how much was paid to former NAED employee Patricia Vandette to drop her sex discrimination complaint against a commis sioner of the utility. It was their money that paid the settlement, after all.

But no. The utility and Van dette signed an agreement not to tell. This essentially private arrangement trumps the pub lic's right to a criti cal piece of informa tion.

Maybe, you might think, that's because an electric depart ment is in a special category; such infor mation could never be withheld by a reg ular town hall department. You'd be wrong.

The Seekonk Board of Selectmen in November approved a `` depar ture agreement'' when Timothy McIn erney stepped down as town administra tor. Four months later, nobody can tell you how much he got. He was paid with taxpayers' money, but again an essentially private arrangement -- an agreement between the board and McInerney -- trumps the public's right to know how its money was used. Not even the Seekonk Finance Committee -- the duly appointed watchdogs of public funds in the town -- has been informed of the details of the settlement.

Such incidents of depriving the public of public information have become increasingly com mon, from small town halls in Massachusetts to the cavernous archives of federal information in Washington, D.C. A combina tion of factors have brought gov ernment secrecy back into style.

In response, most of the nation's major journalism orga nizations have united to promote today as Sunshine Sunday and the days through next Saturday as Sunshine Week: Your Right to Know, and make efforts to restore openness, a necessary ingredient for a healthy democ racy.

`` This is not just an issue for the press,'' says Andy Alexander, Freedom of Information chair man for the American Society of Newspaper Editors. `` It's an issue for the public. An alarming amount of public information is being kept secret from citizens and the problem is increasing by the month. Not only do citizens have a right to know, they have a need to know.''

Media organizations have been down this path before. An alarming degree of secrecy at the height of the Cold War led to campaigns that led to adoption of the federal Freedom of Infor mation Act in 1966.

The pendulum swung radical ly back toward pri vacy in the public arena with the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the ensu ing war on terror ism. Politicians and bureaucrats seized on the opportunity to stamp more and more information `` classified.''

While average cit izens may support a terror war policy of withholding the names of detainees held by the U.S. overseas emdash as con stitutionally ques tionable as that is -- they should be aware that at the same time the government is withholding the locations of stores and restaurants that have received recalled meat, as well as details about Vice President Dick Cheney's 2001 energy poli cy task force.

The secrecy cloak spreads so far that emdash as we report today emdash Fall River officials have been denied engineering reports on a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal that could be an explo sive presence for their city and its neighbors.

Meantime, Freedom of Infor mation Act requests are setting new records by the day emdash most of them coming from Social Security and Veterans Adminis tration benefit applicants. Once upon a time, they merely had to ask for the data.

Our democracy was defined simply by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address as ``government of the people, by the people, for the people.'' That premise is dependent to the peo ple having free access to public information. It is in grave danger unless more sun is made to shine on the workings of government emdash from North Attleboro to Wash ington.