Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s Office released the 2024 version of the state’s Sunshine Laws Manual this week.
The manual, commonly known as the Yellow Book, guides the state’s Public Records and Open Meetings laws.
Yost’s office said the manual was “designed to help Ohioans know their rights and public servants understand their obligations under the law.”
AG Yost today released the 2024 edition of the Sunshine Laws Manual, which has been made more user-friendly and expanded to include a new chapter on law enforcement records.
Details: https://t.co/mdc0XIRZ6c pic.twitter.com/ydxLMY3wN5— Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (@OhioAG) March 11, 2024
This year’s manual version includes a new chapter on law enforcement records, including “exemptions that apply to law enforcement records, as well as issues and exemptions specific to law enforcement officers, crime victims and witnesses,” according to Yost’s office.
The new chapter also addresses “new provisions in the Public Records Act on body-cam and dash-cam footage as well as recent updates to Marsy’s Law.”
The 150-page manual was released this week as the national mark of Sunshine Week, which is observed every year to highlight the importance of public records and open government during the week that includes the birth date, March 16, of Founding Father and former President James Madison.
“In America, we don’t have a king. The Sovereign is the people – We The People. The government works for us but how are you going to know what your employees and the government are doing if you don’t have transparency, if you can’t see the records, if you don’t know what the decisions are if they’re not acting out in the sunshine. That’s why Sunshine Week is so important and why transparency is one of the first principles underlying representative government,” Yost said in a video statement.
“We’re doing a lot in our office. Sunshine Week is a great example and all the training that we do but on top of that, we’re trying to walk the walk,” Yost added. “For example, when we do investigations of officer-involved shootings, when we’re done with it we put it all out there on the web from soup to nuts, beginning to end, you get to see what we did when we did it, how we did it, what the evidence was – it’s all out there. Since we’ve started doing that, we’re finding that communities are feeling a lot more comfortable, even if they don’t like the outcomes, they understand why the outcomes are the way they are.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Ohio Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Dave Yost” by Dave Yost.
