Last week, the Ohio Supreme Court heard arguments in a yearslong case in which state Attorney General Dave Yost has been trying to avoid complying with public records requests from the Center for Media and Democracy.

The center is seeking records from a time period in which the Republican Attorneys General Association (which accepts corporate donations) put together a letter opposing clean air restrictions to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Center for Media and Democracy initially requested documents regarding the RAGA letter in March 2020. At the time Yost couldn’t be bothered, saying there were no pertinent records to turn over and that the information being sought wasn’t a record.

The appeals process since then makes it appear as though there is, in fact, something pertinent Yost is desperate to protect.

Now, the question is whether the records should be turned over for review — not to the Center for Media and Democracy, but to a Tenth District magistrate who would like to review the materials to determine whether they are public record. Yost must believe the magistrate would find that they are, or he would not have appealed to the state supreme court.

“Essentially, this is a question of if a precedent is set for a deposition of an attorney general in this case, it would be open season for lawfare and the weaponization of the public records act for witchhunts by everybody,” Chief Deputy Ohio Solicitor General Michael Hendershot told the court.

He might as well have said “Goodness, we can’t have the people knowing what we’ve been getting up to. They’d be livid.”

Public records are already SUPPOSED to be accessible to everybody. It is not supposed to be up to the politicians to define what is public.

Jeffrey Vardaro, the Center for Media and Democracy’s attorney, warned about giving public officials that kind of power to determine “entire categories of what should be public records are not public,” to prevent courts from weighing in and empowering officials to “refuse to testify about what the records were even about.”

Vardaro said “… it would take the Sunshine Act and turn it into a black box.”

Now more than ever it is essential that doesn’t happen — whether the public official in question is the state attorney general or a township trustee.

Politicians will always try to diminish the public’s access to its own records in favor of keeping activities and agendas in the shadows. It’s why we have a Sunshine Act to begin with.

Surely the courts understand how dangerous it would be to allow them to do it.