Sunshine is a wonderful disinfectant.

That’s why the laws journalists in the country are celebrating this week are referred to as Sunshine laws.

Sunshine Week calls attention to citizens’ right to be fully informed about the workings of government.

Elected officials and others who hold positions funded by government have the sacred responsibility of representing citizens and as acting as stewards over taxpayer dollars.

Citizens have the right to witness every public working of government and know the basis of decisions made by elected and appointed government officials on their behalf.

Open meetings and freedom of information laws are in place to assure the access of citizens and the media to documents and decisions made by elected officials and those of staffers of government agencies.

At the same time, the same legislation provides protections for government from frivolous and wasteful Freedom of Information requests.

For instance, in Mississippi, “a public body may charge reasonable costs for the actual cost of searching, reviewing, duplicating and, if needed, mailing the records. In no case can the cost be more than ‘actual cost.’ The decision to charge for public records is discretionary.”

Unfortunately, some government agencies use that provision to discourage members of the media and individuals particularly from obtaining public information by charging enormous fees for those records.

In one recent Freedom of Information request, The Vicksburg Post was given an estimate of costs of hundreds of dollars in time, research and copying costs — $500 to be exact — for a pretty straightforward public records request. Basically, to fulfill our request would have taken the emailing of one document, readily available.

We could pay the money, but doing so in our opinion would violate the spirit of the freedom of information act. We haven’t given up and are determined to get the information we think the residents of Vicksburg deserve to have without being “discouraged” by ridiculous and imaginary fees for doing so.

Of course, those seeking public records should expect to pay reasonable fees. But using fees to block access to documents and other public information violates the spirit of the state law. That’s happening more than you may realize.

Citizens of Mississippi must be vigilant and discourage any erosion of the state’s open meetings or Freedom of Information laws.