On Nov. 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln made the case for why the United States must stay intact. The Union must win, he said, so "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

However, far too many officials must believe that, unlike Lincoln's vision of the nation in the "Gettysburg Address," government is not of the people, by the people or for the people. Government, they apparently believe, is best handled by them.

That apparently is the verdict of a project launched by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and several other journalism organizations. The Sun Chronicle was one of several Massachusetts newspapers to participate in the project.

The project was fairly simple: Request a document that, by federal law, is mandated to be available to the public. Add up who supplied the document and who didn't nationwide to see how transparent officials really want their government to be.

The document called a Comprehensive Emergency Response Plan, approved by Congress 20 years ago in the wake of the world's greatest chemical plant catastrophe in Bhopal, India, requires every community to develop, update and make public plans for action in cases of chemical or hazardous materials spills. Congress made its intention clear in naming the law the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act. And it didn't just say the public had a right to see the plan; it directed each planning committee to annually notify the public that the plan had been updated and was available. Yet when hundreds of reporters, student journalists and League of Women Voters members nationwide asked recently to see these Comprehensive Emergency Response Plans for their communities, local officials and other custodians of the plans said "no" more than one-third of the time, and two in five provided only partial reports. In some cases, officials ran background checks on citizen auditors or sent police to follow them. The highway patrol in one state even launched an 88-county alert seeking more information about one requester. Officials who denied requests frequently cited national security or terrorism concerns, despite the fact that the 1986 law provides for withholding sensitive information in what's called a Tier II report.

Some agencies clearly understood the law and its intent, however. Forty-four percent released the full report. Some of those had posted the information online; others provided the information on disc. And one official in Iowa said he was delighted to see a citizen seeking the report: "We need more awareness on what to do during an incident for the safety of everyone."

The Sun Chronicle sought reports from the 10 communities it covers. Six - Attleboro, North Attleboro, Rehoboth, Plainville, Foxboro and Mansfield - agreed to provide copies of their plans. Norton and Seekonk officials did not respond to a request, and local governments in Norfolk and Wrentham said their plans were currently in the midst of being updated.

The results of the national audit are being released today, the start of Sunshine Week, the American Society of Newspaper Editor's annual effort to urge full public disclosure of government records.

The concept should be simple: With rare exceptions, all public records must be available to the public. The same holds true for public meetings. No excuses. Citizens have every right to monitor what their government is doing, to make sure the government is doing its job in terms of safety, health and education and to know how their money is being spent.

The Sunshine Week audit shows that many government officials understand that concept. It also exposed the fact that a substantial number of officials treat the public with suspicion or don't know the law or, even worse, are willing to flaunt the law.

But the concept was true when the nation was founded, in Lincoln's day and today: Government belongs to the people, not to government officials. And the people have a right to know what their government does.