March 16 was Freedom of Information Day, created by President Ronald Reagan in remembrance of James Madison’s birthday. It likely came and went unnoticed by most of us, but it’s on the calendar for an important reason.

Madison believed that a free society rests on the open dissemination of information between the government and its people. He wrote in 1822 that a “popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy.” It’s a reminder that Baltimore desperately needs to hear — perhaps more so than any other city in America.

Open records laws are the public’s most powerful tools for holding government accountable. My organization, Open the Books, uses them to file over 60,000 requests every year for payroll, contract spending, expenses and much more in every major city in America.

However, the law is useless if city officials refuse to provide the records they are legally obligated to produce.

Since January 2024, our auditors have filed 12 records requests with the City of Baltimore, eight with Baltimore City Public Schools and one with Morgan State University. Every single one has been ignored, denied or produced with so much missing information that it is essentially useless, except for two instances where we were directed to information already available online.