The state blocked it.
The NAACP sued, arguing that restricting access to public records violated its rights. A federal judge indicated the policy likely raised First Amendment concerns, and the case, NAACP v. Kohn, was settled in 2023, with the state restoring access.
The NAACP prevailed. But the more important point is this: Accessing public records required two years of federal litigation. That should not be the price of transparency.
Across the country, governments promote online “transparency portals” as proof of openness. Visit the website of any larger local government and you will find links to governing board meeting agendas, financial reports and campaign finance disclosures.
In theory, this information is public. In practice, much of it is inaccessible at any meaningful scale. Data can be viewed one page at a time but not downloaded in bulk. Automated collection — often the only way to analyze large data sets — is routinely blocked by security systems that treat all scripted access as suspicious.
This creates what might be called a digital moat: public information that is technically available but functionally out of reach.
True transparency allows analysis. What many governments offer instead is transparency theater, not unlike the security theater we experience at airports.
Modern accountability depends on identifying patterns across large numbers of records. A reporter who wrote a program to collect more than 300,000 pages of public-record rulings from the Texas attorney general’s website identified more than 80 cases in which Texas police had used a loophole to withhold records about in-custody deaths — a pattern invisible in any single document, visible only in the aggregate.
Similarly, an Urban Institute study found that retrieving certain “public” data sets from Washington, D.C.’s systems required automated tools performing the equivalent of over 1 million mouse clicks.
These examples illustrate a simple point: If public data cannot be analyzed at scale, it is not meaningfully public.
The problem extends beyond documents. Many local governments record public meetings, for example, but host the videos on proprietary platforms that limit downloading or allow recordings to expire. Many still do not publish recordings on widely accessible platforms like YouTube. As a result, journalists and researchers cannot easily track how officials’ positions evolve over time or identify patterns in decision-making.
Often, the rationale for restricting access to public data involves performance: Automated traffic, if unmanaged, can degrade performance. But this is a well-understood problem with widely available solutions. The choice is not between locking systems down entirely or allowing unlimited scraping.
A better approach involves permitting automated access by default, provided that the frequency of data requests is limited so as to not overwhelm servers; providing bulk data downloads; offering application programming interfaces that allow structured, monitorable access; and hosting meeting videos in open, permanent, downloadable formats.
A script that pauses briefly between requests imposes roughly the same load as a human user navigating quickly. Modern web standards even allow servers to signal when clients should slow down temporarily, avoiding the need for blanket bans.
None of this is cutting-edge technology. It is standard practice across major commercial platforms. So why hasn’t this been fixed? Because governments have not asked for it.
Local agencies typically select software based on how well it serves individual users — someone applying for a permit or paying a fee. Far less attention is paid to whether the system supports bulk access, automated analysis or long-term archival use.
As a result, vendors have little incentive to design for those use cases. Until procurement contracts require open data access and interoperability, the status quo will persist.
The settlement in NAACP v. Kohn secured access for one organization in one state. It did not change the broader system. The next advocacy group, journalist or researcher seeking large-scale access to public records will likely encounter the same barriers — and may face the same choice between abandoning the effort or going to court.
That should not be necessary. Public data that cannot be analyzed is not truly public, and transparency advocates should insist on easier access to government data in bulk.
Governing's opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing's editors or management.
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