As health care costs continue to rise, Joe Ditre keeps hearing that people need to be smart shoppers when they choose insurance policies, doctors and hospitals.
But as the director of Consumers for Affordable Health Care, a coalition of nonprofit consumer advocacy groups in Maine, Ditre believes that's easier said than done.
He said the state offers little online information to help the public compare insurance plans, charges for medical procedures or the quality of service among doctors or hospitals.
"The reality is that you can't find this information," Ditre said.
A new study of online access to state government information finds that Maine does a relatively poor job of making public information easily available through the Internet.
The study, based on a national survey conducted by newspaper and broadcast journalists, state press associations and other journalism groups, ranked Maine 39th among the 50 states in providing access to 20 kinds of public records.
The survey was released in connection with Sunshine Week, an annual nationwide effort by journalism groups to draw attention to the public's right to know.
Included in the survey were categories that serve the public good, such as death certificates; financial disclosures; audit reports; project expenditures; transportation projects; and inspections and disciplinary actions against attorneys, physicians or other professionals.
Maine did not provide free online access in nine of the 20 information categories. Not available, for example, were inspection reports on nursing homes, hospitals, school buses and child care centers; fictitious business name registrations; death certificates; and personal financial disclosure reports by key public officials.
Charles N. Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, said the national findings show that access to public information is uneven, even as digital technology offers citizens new ways to participate in democracy.
"The future of Freedom of Information is online access," and states have a long way to go to fulfill the promise of electronic self-governance, he said.
In Maine, the survey found that access will improve soon in at least one area. State law requires members of the governor's Cabinet and other top executive branch officials to file personal financial disclosure forms, but they have been available on paper only through the Secretary of State's Office.
A new law shifts the responsibility for collecting those reports to the Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices.
The commission's executive director, Jonathan Wayne, said the office hopes to get the reports online in 2010.
"I think it would be valuable" to move the reports online, Wayne said. "If the forms are merely within a folder in the commission office, they are less accessible to the public."
Ditre, at the health care advocacy group, said the state is also moving toward greater accessibility for records held by the Bureau of Insurance.
Insurance Superintendent Mila Kofman is supporting a bill that would require insurance companies to post their certificates of coverage online for major kinds of policies.
However, Ditre said more needs to be done to make public records accessible and useful. He said media outlets and public interest groups must advocate for transparency and openness.
"Right now, there's not enough people clamoring for this stuff," he said.
The Sunshine Week survey was developed by the American Society of Newspaper Editors' Freedom of Information Committee, the National Freedom of Information Coalition and the Society of Professional Journalists' FOI Committee.
Staff Writer Dieter Bradbury can be contacted at 791-6329 or at:
dbradbury@pressherald.com
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