It’s Sunshine Week, “the annual nationwide celebration of access to public information and what it means for you and your community.”

You wouldn’t know it by reading the news.

After yesterday’s “firing by tweet” of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, President Trump then fired Tillerson’s top spokesman and Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein “for contradicting the official Trump administration account of Tillerson’s dismissal,” CNBC reported.

Goldstein got the ax after issuing a straightforward statement:

“The Secretary had every intention of remaining because of the tangible progress made on critical national security issues,” a statement issued by Goldstein said.

“The Secretary did not speak to the President this morning and is unaware of the reason, but he is grateful for the opportunity to serve, and still believes strongly that public service is a noble calling and not to be regretted.”

Truth may be an absolute defense for defamation, but apparently it’s a firing offense in the current national administration. And, I suspect, in many state and local governments, including our own.

And over on the West Coast, the Washington Post reported:

A spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has resigned over what he described as “false” and “misleading” statements made by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and ICE acting director Thomas D. Homan.

The Post provided additional details about the resignation of James Schwab, who objected to claims being made about the impact of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s advance public warning about an ICE raid last month.

“It’s the job of a public affairs officer to offer transparency for the agency you work for,” Schwab told the Chronicle. “I’ve never been in a situation when I’ve been asked to ignore the facts because it was more convenient.”

As the days went by, he told CNN, “I just couldn’t bear the burden — continuing on as a representative of the agency and charged with upholding integrity, knowing that information was false.”

So after a long career as a government spokesman — with stints at NASA and the U.S. Army before he joined ICE in 2015, according to his online résumé — Schwab quit.

This week I had my own petty clash with a local government department over access to public records. I had gone to the agency after being notified that records I had requested earlier were now available for inspection.

The department’s public information officer was accommodating, providing the documents and a place to sit down and go through them. But when I pulled out my phone and started to use a scanning app to make copies, he quickly objected.

“You can take notes, but you can’t make copies,” he said.

I stopped and looked up at him.

“Yes, I can,” I replied. “The right to inspect and to copy is in the statute. You can check it.”

I was referring to Chapter 92F HRS, our law governing access to government records.

I knew it was right there, up at the top, right after a section where important terms are defined.

PART II. FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

[§92F-11] Affirmative agency disclosure responsibilities. (a) All government records are open to public inspection unless access is restricted or closed by law.

(b) Except as provided in section 92F-13, each agency upon request by any person shall make government records available for inspection and copying during regular business hours.

He tried again to justify his “no copying” position by pointing out that there’s a fee for making copies. And, presumably, I was just trying to avoid paying the fee, as if that’s a bad thing.

But, of course, the agency’s fee is to cover the cost of copies made by the agency, not a fee for the right to make your own copies.

I thought we might have a standoff, which would have added a new dimension to the story I was digging into. But he wisely chose to avoid escalating the matter and instead chose to defer to my position.

“You’ve been doing this a lot longer than I have,” he said with a shrug.

Yes, I have.

So I came out of this experience okay, but a typical person–a member of the general public who asked for the same records–would probably have had to pay the agency’s fee in order to walk out with copies.

It’s an important Sunshine Week reminder that we still have a long way to go to provide for openness and transparency in government, despite the laws on the books.