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Miranda S. Spivack, "Backroom Deals in Our Backyards: How Government Secrecy Harms Our Communities and the Local Heroes Fighting Back" (The New Press, 2025)
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A
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B
This is Lillian Barger, your host for this episode for the New Books Network. My guest is Miranda Spivak, an award winning veteran reporter and editor covering the issue of government accountability. Her book Background deals in our how government secrecy harms our communities and the local heroes fighting back provides useful insights in what every citizen should know. Miranda Spivak, thank you for coming on the podcast.
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C
I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
- [01:38]
B
Well, let's start to talk. Let's talk about your background and how you came to write this book.
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C
So I've been a reporter and editor for pretty much my adult life, so that's more than 40 years. And most of my reporting and editing has been at the state and local level where I think it's very important to have serious journalism because this is really where most people's lives are closely affected by government actions. So that's always been an interest of mine. And I worked at the Washington Post for 20 years, all on the local staff. And people would say, well, don't you want to go to the national staff? And I was like, no, I covered Congress in the White House as a Washington correspondent for the Hartford Current. And I'm done with that. You know, I really prefer journalism where I think you can see the impact of both what we're doing and what government is doing. So that's essentially how I stuck with this beat really for many, many years.
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B
Well, you know, we spend so much time talking about the national news, international news and local issues don't get a lot of attention even locally. Even, you know, I live in a small town and it's, it's very hard to know what's going on.
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C
It is. And I think unfortunately that's been exacerbated by a really precipitous decline in local news organizations. Either they've gone out of business or they've cut way back. And so there is not a reporter now hanging out at the city council meeting at midnight, which is of course, when they do all their deeds that they don't want the public to see. But having reporters present and certainly members of the public present can often be a deterrent for backroom deals. So yeah, it's a big problem nationally.
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B
So what are some of the local issues that get swept under the rug that are important for us?
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C
Well, I think one that is very, very important is our development issues. And so this really, when you have, for example, this proliferation of data centers going on around the country or when Amazon made a national search for its second headquarters and asked governments which who willingly complied to sign non disclosure agreements, they wouldn't even talk to them about all the giveaways that Amazon wanted from state and local governments without an NDA, which of course meant the public was shut out from the get go. So development in general is an important issue and often state laws will actually allow public bodies to meet in secret to discuss real estate deals. So it's a problem also with the law, but it's probably one of the most frequent things that people will run into in their communities. And then of course, school issues and public safety, policing and transportation, I would say those. And trash and water quality, I'd say those are probably the main ones.
- [04:52]
B
Well, you talked about development issues. What about the whole thing of not in my backyard? I know you're addressing what's going on within the political bureaucracy of a town, but what about citizens deciding I don't want low income housing, you know, in my backyard, and using environmental laws as a way to say, wait a minute, there's, you know, there's a spotted owl or something there and you can't build it. But really that's, it's not. They're really interested in the environment. They're more interested in keeping out certain people from their neighborhoods. So what happens when citizens are against other citizens?
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C
Well, I think that, you know, just intramural fights in communities are pretty common, whether it's over housing, low income housing, building a public school, taking land for parks. And so there are plenty of people, you're absolutely right, who will say, well yes, you know, we want, for example, we want to have our smartphone, but oh my goodness, that means we have to have these big data centers and we don't want that. So how do you rectify those kind of inherent conflicts? I mean, the data center thing, you know, the technology is probably going to change in the next 10 years and then they're going to have all these white elephant big buildings. But that's another issue. Certainly NIMBY can be an issue and certainly residents can use it to mask other concerns. But you know, that's I think just one kind of issue and it does make governments more defensive, I will give you that. You know, there's sort of like, listen, we need this, we need to have moderate or low income housing spread across the community. Everybody should do their fair share. And they do hit a lot of resistance, but it doesn't mean they should be doing the deals in secret. That's the issue that I'm concerned about, which is that no matter what the issue is, the tendency of governments is often to push the public out.
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B
But even like when there's some issue comes up and then they have a public forum where people are, citizens are supposed to come and give their input, the only people who can actually show up are people who don't have a job, don't have other responsibilities. You know, it's a, it's at 10:00 in the morning or 2:00 in the afternoon. And, and they, they schedule things so that you can't go or very few people can go, I think people need.
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C
To object to that. I mean that seems to me to be a pretty basic kind of thing which is that governments need to hold these meetings at different times. You know, there are some people who work a night shift, so maybe 10 in the morning is okay for them, but they, they need, if they're really, truly seeking public input, which is a. Debatable, debatable. Usually those deals have all been worked out before the public meetings, but, and that would not be legal. But that often happens. But you know, they, I think they're, the responsible government would hold a night meeting, hold a day meeting, whatever. And, and then you know, the other problem is that people with families, people who got to get their kids to school or feed them and put them to bed, you know that that's a tough crowd to get engaged, but of course, they're the people who really need engaged because they're the ones who are going to be protecting the future of our democracy.
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B
So how do businesses give some examples of how business interests deploy the rules of the game to control the outcome?
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C
Well, one of the things that I did a lot of research on and which is a theme that runs through my book, is that governments around the country have done a lot of outsourcing of government functions to private companies. And once they do that, they often lose control of the data and documents that are in the possession of the private companies and aren't necessarily in the possession of the government. So when somebody wants to find out about the contract that the local government has with the trash collection company, which is one thing that gets outsourced a lot, sometimes that company will say, well, there are certain things we cannot provide to the public, even though we're doing government work and we're being paid by tax dollars, because somehow those are proprietary, internal, you know, trade secrets is the term that they use. And this has been a big problem, and it's a growing problem around the country where and the courts have made it easier for private companies to claim, even when they're doing the public's work, that they are in possession of information that constitutes a trade secret and therefore they don't have to disclose it. So, you know, there are a couple solutions to that. One would be to quit outsourcing so much stuff. And the other, of course, is to change the law in such a way that if you are a govern a private company doing government work, probably 99% of what you do should be disclosable to the public, who are, after all, paying the bills.
- [10:20]
B
So you, you talk about different citizens who have pushed back against some of the shenanigans that are going on in city Hall. And your book is based on those case studies. Can you talk about a few of those good examples of how, you know, citizens have taken. First they figured out there was a problem, and then what they did.
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C
Yeah. And also I would caution you against using the word citizens because a lot of state open records and open meetings laws apply to residents of the state. Not all, but many. And so activism can come from all kinds of people, whether they are citizens, residents, whatever. They're taxpayers, usually. So the issues that I looked at were, first of all, I was looking for geographic diversity, racial diversity, you know, gender diversity. I just wanted anybody and everybody to be able to at least see themselves in one of the examples in the book, even if the issue that this particular activist, and these are nascent activists, these are people who become activists, they don't sign up for this. But, you know, you might have an issue with poison drinking water, and that was one of the examples that I wrote about failing sewers, toxins, and firefighter protective gear. Dangerous roads. It's an amazing story to me that most states will not give you information about the most dangerous roads in your community for a complex series of reasons which are detailed in the book and then hidden algorithms widely used in the criminal justice system and that are based often on misinformation or bad data, and yet have a big impact on people's lives. In this case, it was somebody who was nominated for early release from prison, and the algorithm tripped him up, even though he had a perfect record for the last 10 years. That's a guy named Glenn Rodriguez. So the goal really of the book was to show different issues, but with the same recurring theme, which is that the big obstacle was that the governments and often private companies working together were pushing the public away and not giving them information, which made it hard for these people to try to solve the problems in their communities.
- [12:50]
B
How many of the problems are increasing due to the fact that we have a lot of infrastructure that needs replacement? You know, sewage systems and roads and bridge and bridges and things like that that are, you know, old and need to be repaired. How much of the problem is caught? Are we getting more problems that aren't getting solved because of that?
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C
I don't know that I could draw a direct line between failing infrastructure and growing secrecy. I think you can draw a line between growing secrecy and general outsourcing of government functions. Police departments, for example, often don't crunch their own data. They send it out to a company, and then the company sends it back to them and helps them identify, say, hotspots where perhaps they should deploy more police officers. The problem with that is that that means that the private company sometimes is sitting on data for many, many days about crime in your neighborhood that you're not being told about. So I think the recurring theme really is that. Or one of the recurring themes is that outsourcing and handing previously roles that were previously done by governments, handing those to private companies has put the private companies in the driver's seat in terms of conveying information to the public.
- [14:21]
B
What about. That's. You're talking about services. What about things like, I think about this classic example of the. A football franchise who wants the new stadium, you know, and they end up getting government money to build a stadium with, you know, the promise of something. I don't know exactly how that goes, but why should certain residents pay for a football stadium that is a, actually a business enterprise, entertainment business. And of course, the reason's always given that, oh, well, it's going to bring all kinds of business, you know, that come from that. How do those deals happen? I mean.
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C
Well, a lot of those deals happen behind closed doors and because they are often real estate deals and real estate deals in their early stages at least can be exempt from public disclosure under just about every state open records, open meetings laws. So that's one way. But I think the one thing that would be very interesting for residents to look into or for enterprising reporters to look into is the claims that these stadium subsidies, which often are tax breaks, delayed property tax payments, free land or reduced price land, all of these things. If you could add up what the community paid to get that stadium and then get the data which you should be able to get from the government about the economic development, the economic benefits. And maybe there are some, and maybe they aren't. I mean, in a lot of communities, the complaint, of course has been that these kinds of deals, or the Amazon second headquarter deal, they don't deliver what they said they were going to deliver either in taxes, jobs, economic prosperity. But you have, you know, the government has some of that data, although how they portray it may be open to question. But, you know, I have yet to, I mean, I've heard a lot of complaints about stadium deals around the country and I have yet to ever see one where the government stood up and said, oh yeah, here, here are the billions of dollars we made off of this. And this is why it was a good deal for us. Yeah.
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B
And I was, I lived in a city where the, that happened with an opera house. They built an opera house with, you know, it was a deal about the opera. The problem with that, of course, you know, how many people go to the opera. I mean, and so, you know, it's always based on, oh, it's going to be of benefit to so many people and there's a very small population that actually goes to the opera and there's more people that actually go bowling. So, you know, maybe you should build a voting alley.
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C
Right. Or use a public park or the, you know, public tennis courts or now pickleball courts or whatever.
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B
Yeah, right.
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C
I mean, those are perhaps good investments for communities. Certainly parks are. And open space. I mean, there are a lot of benefits to that.
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B
But and once you, once you build a, once you build a stadium, hardly no one can afford to go to them.
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C
Right, right. I mean, the ticket prices are just out of sight. So. So it's sort of tax breaks for the wealthy, I think.
- [17:47]
B
So what happens with the, you talked a little bit about the media, the reporters, journalists. What kind of roadblocks? I mean, you've had experience. What kind of roadblocks did you run into being a journalist trying to like investigate certain issues? Is it more they tell you the.
- [18:06]
C
Information'S not available, they have a lot of excuses. Sometimes they can't find it. And that is actually probably the most honest answer because small state and local governments, and I think you can look around the country and still see that this is a problem. They have not digitized their data. They're not up to date on that. And part of that is the legislatures don't give them enough money or they make a choice between funding, you know, a teacher position or funding somebody who could digitize their data. So they have a lot of trouble with paper documents. And that is a nationwide problem. And the court system, the state and local courts are also way behind on that. So that is problem number one. Problem number two is there's sort of a question, I think often in the minds of people who manage public records for small and medium sized governments. I don't know how fluent they really are in the law. And so their tendency is, when in doubt, don't give it out. And that means that if you want to fight with them, they're going to put the burden on you to make a challenge, which sometimes means you have to go to court. But they haven't made a mistake necessarily by not giving it out. There's fear, there is, I would say, just a lot of reasons why governments are reluctant to share information. And one of them, I think estates attorneys general really need to do a better job of training these governments in what their obligations are to the public. I mean, in some states, if they don't give it out and they're found to have withheld information incorrectly, the government can end up paying a lot of damages to somebody who sued. So it could be a very costly mistake to withhold information too.
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B
So if you're not a journalist, you're just a resident and you want information, it's even harder for you then?
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C
I think so. And I think that that was what I was really interested in when I was writing this book was I knew the experiences that I had had as a journalist and I was at the Washington Post we had good inside lawyers who were able to help us. And I kept thinking, you know, it's hard for me and I know the rules and I know what I'm entitled to. What is it like for somebody? And this is where the term accidental activist comes in. Somebody who's had no experience investigating anything. They have had very little interaction with their governments and suddenly there's a problem in their communities and they want to get help from the government and instead they hit an information blockade. And what is that experience like? And it's tough. It's tough. But I mean, that's part of the purpose of my book, is to show people what they can do and what they are entitled to get under law. And it shouldn't be a matter of having to file a lawsuit. Oh, my goodness.
- [21:04]
A
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B
Experian Kay Jeweler's early Black Friday sale is happening now. Get up to 50% off Black Friday deals and up to 40% off everything else. Don't miss this sale. Start your season with sales savings. Only A K exclusions apply. Ck.com exclusions for details. So how is technology? You talked about these. A lot of local governments don't even don't have the technology. All their records are paper, which makes it a nightmare to go through. But how does is technology when it is implemented, is that making it harder?
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C
You know, it's a mixed bag. It should make it easier. For example, if somebody asks for the emails between Amazon and the mayor over the application or over the NDA or something like that. You know, AI could be useful in doing a search for that. It has its potential. It's not perfect, of course, and it won't turn up everything, but it could shorten the process, I think. But if you don't have, if your data and documents are not digitized or barely digitized, then using technology to do a search can't. I mean, it has to be done by hand, by human eyes. And anyway, all of these searches in the end need to be reviewed by real people, not by, you know, software systems. Because Somebody who knows the issue will be able to recognize if everything is there or information is missing.
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B
When you're doing this work, when you're trying to see, especially when things, services are outsourced, how much have you seen? Have you seen evidence of graft?
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C
Oh, my God.
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B
Yeah. Talk about that. How much do you think is going on there?
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C
I think it's a mix. I think, first of all, I've always, when I was an editor and I had young reporters, and they would always think there was a conspiracy going on somewhere. I would say, wait a minute, wait a minute. You can never underestimate incompetence. Start with that. Start with that. And then, yes, it could be something way worse than that. It could be somebody on the take. I mean, one of the issues in my book is about a community in Alabama, in Uniontown, Alabama. And that issue is still unresolved. And that has to do with fixing a really disgustingly failing sewer system that's been failing for 40 years and that the state has really never addressed. And they have spent 30 million-plus in mostly federal money from the US Department of Agriculture, but some from the state for a community about, I don't know, 2,500 people. I mean, just do the, you know, the, the per capita on this and the. And the problem is not resolved. So where did that money go? There has yet to be a really formal public reckoning about how the money was spent. And in fact, when Ben Eaton, who is the hero of that story, he is the retired high school shop teacher in Uniontown, when he starts to ask for documents and, you know, where are the contracts and where is the, where are the invoices and what these contractors really do. He gets pushed aside. And there has yet to be a real public reckoning about the spending of that money. I'm still amazed that the inspector General of the U.S. department of Agriculture or the state of Alabama hasn't looked into that, but they haven't.
- [25:17]
B
When it comes to contracts and money, you'd think that auditors.
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C
Yeah, auditing. Auditing would be a good idea. I mean, there are a lot of places where there's no requirement for that, which is why the people need to step up and at least shine a light on where they think the problems are.
- [25:35]
B
Mostly a lot of times you don't even know there's a problem. I mean, I'm thinking about California. You know, the reporting that it's notorious in California, that they can't get anything built first. They have all the barriers to building, you know, codes and laws and regulations that you have to go through. And while you're doing that, you're spending money, you know, trying to get the permits. Have you done any work in California or do you know of what's happening with some of those major projects, you know, trying to build a railroad or that rail line?
- [26:19]
C
I have not. I know that that's. President Trump has complained a lot about that, and I think they cut off federal money for that. But I have not really looked at that, except to say that I will say this, that there's a really great open government group in California called the First Amendment Coalition, and they have done a lot of work trying to expose problems in the state government and in the local governments where there has been some effort to hide the. Sometimes it has to do with policing, sometimes it does have to do with construction projects. You know, there's a whole, whole range of issues. But their work is. I would commend it to anybody who's trying to figure out what's going on in California.
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B
So what kind of tools do citizens actually have?
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C
They have a lot, actually. And that's also one of the big messages of my book. And in fact, the last chapter details that the tools that are available to people who come into some kind of contact with their government and want information and are having trouble getting it. So, first of all, every state and territory has an open records law and an open meetings law. And that means really that about 90 to 95% of what is produced by a government or a local government, a state government or a local government is a matter of public record, and you should be able to get it. Some states and localities are better than others. They post stuff online so they don't have to keep responding to the same question over and over again. But people should really get an understanding of what their state public records law allows. And I would just say it allows you to get almost anything. And I also think that another piece of advice I give people is do this now. Learn about the process now before you have a problem. Someday you may encounter a problem in your community, and then you will know what the moves are and the steps are that you can take. But certainly requesting documents, getting to know the record keeper at city hall or in the courthouse, and get to know them before you need them. And I mean, it's source cultivation, and that's something journalists do all the time, which is talk to people long before we think, you know, we're going to need them. So that's one thing right away, which is state public records laws tell Governments to err on the side of disclosure. There are some, there are some barriers to that that are legal. For example, personnel issues can't be usually disclosed. You know, health issues, stuff like that. That's personal, but most stuff can be disclosed. Another thing that I think people should do is ask their governments if they have engaged in any non disclosure agreements with any kind of private entity and if so why and what are they and give us a list of those. In some states or in some cases that I looked at, the non governments were signing non disclosure agreements and then were also signing a statement that said they wouldn't disclose that they'd signed a non disclosure agreement. So that's a tough one. But that is something, you know, the government should know right away that this is something you're thinking about, that you're concerned that maybe they are signing these NDAs. And why are they signing them? Usually it's because the private company is demanding them, like Amazon did. So those are some tools right away police reports that maybe don't have anything to do with you, but have to do with something that was in your neighborhood. You should be able to get that kind of information. There's a lot of stuff you should be able to get contracts, you know, is the mayor's brother in law getting a big contract? It might be nice to know crosscheck all those kinds of contracts with campaign finance reports if in fact these are, you know, elections where there are big donors. See who's giving money to your community and try to figure out why it might have been somebody who wants to build a data center, who is sort of salting the, or you know, whatever, you know, cultivating the ground ahead of time. You know, there's a lot out there, but I really encourage people and also to show up at public meetings. I think when politicians see people in the audience, it makes them think twice about doing something stupid or dishonest or whatever. So being present in your community and in your local government I think is really, really important. And now that we're out of COVID pretty much, even though a lot of these governments are putting those meetings on zoom, I say go in person because you cannot really tell what's going on in the room. If you are looking at it on Zoom, you can't see the interaction between city council members, for example, and you can't get the documents usually that they're working on, which once they discuss a document that's a public, becomes a public document. So I mean those are just a few things, but actually the public Has a lot of power, and the laws have actually given us a lot of power. But you have to use them so they don't get rusty.
- [31:46]
B
Do you think that it's easier if you get several people or group of people going after an issue than just one individual? Because they can write you. They can write you off and go, well, that's just a nut.
- [32:02]
C
That's absolutely true. One of the other pieces of advice that I've given, and also pretty much the activists in the book also did, was they built coalitions. And so once you're absolutely right, you go to the city council and you complain about something in your neighborhood or you're unhappy about something. Something in the school system or whatever, and they're. You're right, it's a nut. Or it's one person or, you know, whatever. If you come with a petition signed by 50 people, that's a different deal altogether. And politicians pay attention to numbers, for sure. And so building a coalition, networking, trying to get information from around the country for people who might have dealt with the issue that you're dealing with. I mean, there, as I said, there's sort of a litany of local issues that everybody is experiencing and. And people have a lot of experience. Another thing that I was fascinated by in researching my book was that a lot of people did a lot of networking on Facebook. And so I know this is for the over 50 crowd. I tell this to young people all the time. I said, young reporters. I said, you gotta look at Facebook. I'm sorry, I know you guys don't like it, but you gotta look because there's a lot of conversations going on there. And that was true with the woman, Diane Cotter, who discovered toxins in firefighter protective gear. Aside from sending 22,000 emails to people around the country, which was just amazing, she was able to get the attention of a lot of firefighters who are wearing this gear by posting stuff on Facebook. And that was also true of other people in the book, that Facebook became a useful communication and networking tool.
- [33:44]
B
Do you up have you covered at all the whole idea of the whistleblower? Somebody inside the government who's. Local governments who go, hey, this is happening in a verdict.
- [33:57]
C
Yeah. I mean, as a reporter, I certainly had sources inside government who were concerned about things. I think also that in the case of many of the people who I wrote about, they learned to make friends with people in government, and I really mean sort of political friends, but that they could get help from people in government. There were people who were concerned about the COVID up or the obstruction of information and did want to help them. And I think people really need to look for those people. And if you're in a small town, you know, half the people who are working in the town government are probably your neighbors. So you can get some help and they should help. And there are many people who want to help in government. It's not all obstruction all the time, for sure.
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B
What about citizens partnering up or working with the press? With journalists?
- [34:55]
C
Yeah. I mean, a lot of my, you know, a lot of my best tips came from people in the community who, you know, saw something and said something and sought us out. Now the really difficult thing, I think now is because local news is still on life support. It's hard to find those journalists now. But I also think that community listservs and there's lots of different ways to communicate and to get the word out, obviously encouraging people to be factual and not, you know, overstate the case. But certainly, I mean, I would always try the local newspaper if there is one, the local online startup, the local radio stations are good. There's a lot, there are still a lot of ways to get the word out and people should try to do that. I can just tell you, even in my case, I've been trying to get some reporters in Alabama to pay attention to this sewer issue because I think it's clear that somebody needs to follow the money, which I haven't been able, wasn't able to do. You know, my deadline eventually came for the book and I just had to finish the manuscript where that situation was. But you know, how, what happened to $30 million? I mean, how can you, how can you not wonder about that? And I have had trouble getting the attention of local journalists. So it is hard. But people should not give up. And you know, to the extent that there are a lot of small news startups taking hold across the country, look for those, you know, look for journalism schools where the students are out trying to write real stories.
- [36:45]
B
I'm going to backtrack a little bit. You talked about how businesses, you know, ask for non disclosure agreements because they're saying this is a trade secret. I'm wondering what other tactics do. Businesses or special interest? It's not just business, it's special interests. What do they do to get things favorable for them that might be hurtful to the residents?
- [37:15]
C
Well, I think for example, in Hoosick Falls, New York, which is one of the communities I wrote about and where a local resident, Michael Hickey, discovered that there was an extraordinary amount of forever Chemicals in the public drinking water. Big problem. Also a big problem around the country, by the way. I would tell everybody to check their, you know, try to get their drinking water tested. But, you know, the implicit issue there, and sometimes it was openly stated and sometimes it was sort of nudge, nudge, wink, wink, was that the companies that were had a role in the pollution were just going to pull up stakes and, you know, take away 200 jobs or whatever. That's also true in Alabama in Uniontown, where the one of the companies that is, shall we say, overusing the sewer system and has some of which has been documented by the state environmental agency, but they don't seem to do anything about. Is owned by a man named Paul Bryant Jr. It's a catfish plant. And he. If you know anything about Alabama football, his father was Bear Bryant, who's like the most famous football coach in Alabama and maybe national history. So, yeah, I mean, and then that catfish plant has also said, yeah, maybe we're just going to pick up stakes and leave. And these are communities with not a lot of good jobs. So that's a threat for sure.
- [38:44]
B
That, yeah, it's almost like not blackmail, taking the town hostage. You know, we'll shoot you if you don't do this. So what do you think? What is your big message that you're wanting to say to people who read your book?
- [39:03]
C
Well, I think first of all, they need to feel and understand that they actually have the power. And actually, I think that the recent state and local elections around the country that showed votes for change, shall we say, show that people, when they band together, they do have a lot of power. So there are ways to exercise power at the state and local level right now before an election. That doesn't have to be the way you do it, but, you know, you have a lot of rights to information that your tax money is paying for and you should learn to exercise those rights politely, of course, but, you know, stand up to whatever kind of obstruction or indifference is often the case too, from government. You know, they just sort of blow you off or we'll get back to you. And they don't. So I think people have a lot of power. It's in the laws. The laws are pretty good. It's really how the laws are being enforced or not enforced, that's the problem. But on paper, pretty much every state law is pretty good about making government open, making meetings open. And then I think people need to show up. And I think they need to show up long before they need something from the government. They should learn who's pulling on the levers of power, how does the system work, who has access to information, who's making decisions about spending. I mean, educate yourself about how government works, and then when something blows up in your community, you'll know what to do.
- [40:42]
B
So persistence, you have to be persistent.
- [40:46]
C
Yeah. I mean, I think you have to learn the ropes. And yes, all of the people in my book were incredibly persistent. I mean, sometimes I wondered, how did they do it? But they got mad. They felt blown off or dissed or something, and they just stuck with it in some cases for 10 years. It's really amazing and they are amazing people. But, yeah, persistence is definitely part of it and learning the process so that when somebody turns you down for something, you can say, no, I know what the state open records law says, and it says I'm entitled to this.
- [41:19]
B
So what do you think are the problems that we're going to be running into post your book that we haven't seen yet? Can you predict what kinds of things are going to be on the table that citizens need to be aware of that's coming?
- [41:35]
C
Yeah, I think the environmental issues, the clean water issues, the clean air issues, I think we're already seeing that the federal government is standing down on a lot of those issues. And I think it's going to get worse. Air quality, water quality is going to get worse at the state and local level, and it's going to be up to the states and to local governments to do something about it. They may not have the money, they may not have the political will, but I think sort of basic issues like that that really affect everybody's health and welfare are what people ought to be on the alert for. Certainly this whole backtracking by EPA on the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal agency on the enforcement of the levels of forever chemicals in the drinking water, and they're backing off on that. So. And I mean, it's, you know, I think we're heading towards dangerous times, obviously, also the dismantling of the federal health infrastructure, the National Institutes of Health, the research, the Centers for Disease Control, the collecting of data, it's going to be up to the states to collect good data on and not, you know, on health issues. And you got to pressure them to do it because otherwise we're not going to have a clue what the state of public health is in this country.
- [43:03]
B
So even though we spend a lot of time talking about the national issues and international issues, the power may be moving towards the states.
- [43:16]
C
I think the power has always been with the States. I just think the States haven't had to exercise it as much. And I think now is definitely a good time to really pay attention to your skate. Pay attention and sharpen your skills.
- [43:32]
B
Yes. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Miranda Spivak. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in to another episode from New Books Network. I am your host, Lillian Barger.