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Here’s what irks me when government officials argue they have to keep public information secret, such as Sparks is doing with marijuana licensees.
They never even notice they share it with other governments. They only want to keep it from us.
The marijuana regulation specifies how the state must share the info with local government. That means it’s not confidential at all — plenty of people have access to it. Law enforcement, regulators, elected officials, administrators and so on.
It’s only officially secret. Only privileged people can know.
Here’s how the Sparks attorney explained it:
“It’s a legal quagmire because (the marijuana industry) does violate federal law. To me, the rationale for keeping it quiet is that people don’t necessarily need their personal information out there on something that’s illegal on a federal level.”
I see about, oh, seven instances of flawed logic in that statement.
- The Feds don’t know?
- It’s illegal, so that’s why Sparks must cover it up?
- By ‘personal information,’ he means their names.
- By ‘legal quagmire’ he means, no matter what we do we’re going to get sued.
- Putting their names ‘out there’ would reveal who exactly got licenses, which are a valuable commodity handed out by a political body. What could go wrong?
(OK. I found only five.)
By keeping things hush-hush, the opportunity for corruption is magnified and the chances of being caught are minimized. That, in essence, is the rationale.
Because everybody else is wondering, why isn’t the name on a business license public information?