Your right to know
The decision to publish wages for tax-based entities wasn't a spur-of-the-moment idea we dreamed up late one night. It wasn't a story we threw together in an hour.
We went through proper channels to request the information from cities, schools, and county offices. We studied the figures, discussed the story, and figured out the best way to present the information in a readable format.
We compiled the figures, checked, rechecked, read, and reread. A lot of thought and conversation went into repercussions of publishing possibly volatile information.
Through all this we never lost sight of the goal — the public's right to know.
We didn't publish the wage information to give people something to gossip and grumble about. We didn't publish the figures so the public could decide who was overpaid or who wasn't paid enough.
Access to public records is available to everyone. Those who wanted to know about wages in the county could have followed the same information-gathering process.
Readers buy this newspaper because they want information. If we begin deciding what information the public needs to know, we become a censor instead of an information provider.
It's this newspaper's responsibility to provide information. That's what we did and what we will continue to do. We don't apologize for that.
— DONNA BERNHARDT
