Government conducts the people's business. That means the people must know what government does.

To that end, Maine law states that, "The Legislature finds and declares that public proceedings exist to aid in the conduct of the people's business." From the town office to the sheriff's office to the Secretary of State's office, government must be conducted in the open and light of day. With very few exceptions, the public has a right to know about the proceedings and actions of Maine government and elected officials.

The state law that guarantees citizen access to information about government and its doings is called the Maine Freedom of Access Act. This year, a new training and certification requirement has been instituted by the Legislature to ensure that all elected officials, including school board members and the governor himself, understand their obligations under the act and know how to carry them out.

That's a good and important step in heightening public officials' awareness of the Freedom of Access Act. If the act is to have real meaning in our democracy, then it has to be understood and supported at the highest levels of government.

Yet we still have concerns about the ability of citizens to get the information out of government that they need and are entitled to. We know about too many cases where both citizens and news gatherers like ourselves have been given the cold shoulder, the indifferent shrug, the brushoff or worse when requesting government documents.

Before complying with a public records request, town officials have demanded identification or demanded a reason justifying the request, both of which are a violation of the law. Police departments refuse to hand over their case files, or delay their distribution beyond any reasonable amount of time. School staff bent on security won't release emergency response plans for citizen review.

For some -- though not all -- public officials, the attitude about public records requests under the state's Freedom of Access Act is, "Make me."

And while training in the public records law may help them change their attitude, Maine citizens need more to protect their interests. What they need is a consumer-oriented measure that would help citizens know and exercise their rights.

That additional measure, as we have suggested in the past, is to require every municipal and state office to post a statement that declares the public's right to know, the basic requirements of the law and a hotline to call if that right is being denied.

The measure would be easy for the Legislature to enact and no public official would dare speak against it. Such a poster would be easy to devise and distribute -- the state could even hold a competition for its design among students, whose education in their rights as participants in democracy can never begin too early.

And in the end, it would be a very democratic move, even more so than educating elected officials about the state's Freedom of Access Act. For no matter how enlightened a public official may be in the rights of citizens to hold their government accountable, it's still within the government official's power to withhold information, however unjustifiably.

But educated citizens who know their rights will not be easily deterred -- and that is as it should be.