Controversy over sharing foster parent information continues...

Editorial: Hiding foster care records won't safeguard Ohioans' rights or toddlers' lives
Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 9, 2007.

Almost 47 years ago, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that public records are the people's records. Since December 1960, the only thing that has changed about that is Ohio has a governor who seemingly bridles at that maxim.

Democrat Ted Strickland is the first Ohioan since 1928 to have reached the Governor's Mansion without previously having been elected to a local or state office. And, particularly as to the Open Records Act, that shows.

Today, the Republican-led Ohio House of Representatives, with Strickland's approval, may try to close Ohio foster-care records. A gag could be folded into House-proposed reforms in the state's foster-care laws.

A hideous death last year in suburban Cincinnati helped inspire the overall reform bill. Marcus Fiesel, age 3, a ward of Butler County, died when his "caregivers" wrapped him in a blanket bound with packing tape and left him in a closet so that they could attend a family reunion without him. When they returned from Kentucky, Marcus was dead, so they burned his body and reported him missing.

The likely House foster-care amendment would let state and local agencies hide from the public foster-parent records compiled - for the public - by county welfare departments and children's services boards.

A Strickland spokeswoman confirmed Monday that the governor supports the record-closing amendment, reasoning that an abusive parent could track down and harm an abused child legally taken from that parent.

In reality, the only people served by secret foster-care records are the bureaucrats (and state contractors) who consign the Marcus Fiesels of the world to tax-financed hells. If Marcus Fiesel's death demands accountability, closing public records is a perverse way to achieve that goal. Legal details aside, Marcus Fiesel was a ward of all Ohioans. And Ohio failed him.

The irony is that Strickland might not be governor - and his fellow Democrats might not be attorney general, secretary of state and state treasurer - if newspapers hadn't used the Open Records Act to help expose corruption in the Bureau of Workers' Compensation.

Having betrayed Marcus Fiesel once, Ohio - as represented by Strickland, Speaker Jon Husted and Husted's House Republicans - now runs the risk of betraying his memory. That, too, would be outrageous.