Questions of transparency cropped up throughout the tiers of state and local government over the year as legislation, city policy and school board votes presented an air of secrecy.
Among the more notable local battles for transparency this past year was efforts by the Sun-Gazette to continue publishing daily police activities as it has done for the past three decades. This came about after city police began withholding emergency dispatch records, also known as police logs, in February.
After discussions behind the scenes came to no avail, the newspaper began submitting Right-to-Know requests to the city in August.
At the time, the Sun-Gazette also discovered that, while the police department had stopped sending logs to the newspaper, it continued to send them to other media outlets, rental agencies and private businesses in the area with the condition that the records not be published.