Sunshine Week — the seven days dedicated annually to spotlighting the importance of the public’s access to public records — doesn’t begin until March 12, and Freedom of Information Day, promoted by an act signed into law in 1966, isn’t until March 16, but here in January Gov. Kay Ivey has given us a hint that the sun will shine a bit brighter come springtime.

Ivey signed Executive Order 734 on Jan. 26, “Promoting Transparency in State Government Through Enhanced Accessibility to Public Records,” and although governmental institutions have had, by law, for nearly six decades been mandated to provide or deny media and the public with public records upon request, this order greatly snugs up a few loose ends that have long plagued those searching for access.

Frankly, some public institutions are great at providing requesting records in an efficient, timely, non-cost prohibitive manner.

But many others are not. Indeed, it’s not uncommon for a newspaper such as The Cullman Times to have a public record request fulfilled months, or sometimes more than a year, after the record request was made. Whether this is due to a lack of resources, an inordinately broad request or simply stalling on the part of the agency is often moot in terms of educating the public — because the subject of reporting is no longer a relevant issue. In those situations, it’s not only the newspaper that is hampered in its reporting, but the taxpaying public who has a right to know what their government is up to.

Executive Order 734 shores up some of these concerns. Not only are there specific timelines depending on the type of request being made — in no case longer than 45 days to provide a “substantive response or denying the request” — but for the first time a uniform fee schedule has been established.

This is all good news for the media and others who submit records requests going forward, and we applaud Alabama’s move in this direction. But it’s not perfect.

Agencies, according to a release from the governor’s office, “must comply with the new requirements or begin to make formal rule changes necessary to implement these new requirements on or before April 26, 2023.”

We hope our public institutions are prepared to fulfill the letter of the law by that date — and that limited resources, broad requests or stalling don’t morph into a long, vague “beginnings” in the implementation of the new rules.