What Sunshine Week is
Sunshine Week runs March 15 to 21 this year. It is a national week that celebrates open government and the public's right to know what its government is doing, and it is honestly one of our favorite weeks at Pawnee City Hall. The name says it all: when government works in the sunshine, residents can see how decisions get made.
For us, the week comes down to two everyday tools: FOIA and records retention. One lets you ask for public records, and the other makes sure those records still exist when you ask. Together, they are how a small city stays accountable to the people who live in it.
Open government, in plain terms
FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act, gives anyone the right to request public records. You do not need a reason, and you do not need to be a resident. In Pawnee you file at pawnee.gov/foia, and the City Clerk's Office handles the rest. People use it for all kinds of things: checking a contractor's permit history, reading the minutes from a meeting they missed, or comparing this year's budget to last year's.
Records retention is the quieter half. The city's records retention schedule sets how long we keep each type of document, from 5 years for routine emails to permanent storage for council minutes. A right to request records only means something if the records are still around, and that is what the schedule protects.
How Pawnee is marking the week
We are keeping it Pawnee-style, with the doors open and the coffee on. Monday, the City Clerk's Office hosts an open house. Drop in with any question, no appointment needed.
Wednesday at noon, we run a live FOIA filing demo, and lunch is provided. Friday at 4pm, City Clerk Ethel Beavers takes questions in a records retention Q&A. She has been doing this for 32 years, so bring your hardest ones. The full schedule is at pawnee.gov/sunshine.
Why transparency matters
Open records are not an abstraction. They are how a resident checks whether a budget line went where the council said it would, how a reporter confirms a contract, and how the city's own history stays honest. The papers of Charlotte Greene, Pawnee's first Black councilmember, are in our archive today because someone decided those records were worth keeping.
That pairing is what Sunshine Week is really about. FOIA gives you the right to ask, records retention makes sure there is something to find, and open government is what turns up in between.
Join us, or just file a request
You do not have to wait for March to use any of this. If there is a record you want to see, you can file a FOIA request today at pawnee.gov/foia, or read how long we keep things in the records retention schedule at pawnee.gov/retention. And if you are free during Sunshine Week, stop by City Hall. There will be cookies.
