New England First Amendment Coalition Poll: Open Up! New Englanders Value Open Records.

The vast majority of New Englanders believe that having open access to the workings of government is important to citizenship and most favor toughening the laws that protect access, according to a poll of attitudes toward the First Amendment.

Moreover, nearly nine out of ten New Englanders believe government agencies that wrongly withhold public records should pay the legal bills necessary to open them.

The poll, commissioned by The New England First Amendment Coalition (NEFAC) and conducted by the University of New Hampshire's Survey Center, asked more than 600 New Englanders their attitudes toward the First Amendment and transparency in government.

Among the findings:

• One in four respondents strongly believe that public business in their community is done out of public view.
  
  
• majority in the six-state region believe the news media seeks out public information useful to citizens. But one in four people polled disagreed, 14 percent strongly.
  
  
• Most citizens, have not asked for a public record in the last 12 months and, of those who did, 87 percent said they got what they asked for.
  
  
• A plurality of respondents said they were familiar with the workings of their state's open records laws.
  
  
• On the whole New Englanders are satisfied with the response of state and local government to citizen requests for access, but they remain skeptical of government motives.
  
  

Regarding the First Amendment and the five freedoms it protects, poll respondents said they valued freedom of speech most highly (44 percent) followed by religion (15 percent) petition (7 percent), press (3 percent) and assembly (2 percent.) But 25 percent said they regarded all five as equally important. Asked which of the five they regarded as least important, 44 percent said that all were of equal importance. And the press was ranked second to speech, ahead of assembly, religion and petition.

Dr. Andrew Smith, director of UNH's Survey Center said the overarching significance of the poll lies in how highly citizens value openness in government and how skeptical they are that public officials share that value.

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New England First Amendment Coalition is a member of NFOIC.