From Staff Reports

State Rep. Cam Ward has been appointed by the Speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives to serve on the recently created Open Records Task Force.

The task force was created by House Joint Resolution 90 in the 2005 Special Legislative Session and is charged with developing a uniform open records law for the State of Alabama.

There are 29 members of the task force with two members selected from the House of Representatives.

Rep. Ward will serve along with State Rep. Blaine Galliher of Gadsden in working on this commission.

Currently under Alabama law, there is no uniform process for requesting public records from state or local government entities.

Ward said &uot;under the current system of public records access in Alabama the average citizens has to go through a difficult process in obtaining information about what their government is working on.&uot;

He went to say that he believes &uot;distrust for the political process is at an all-time high in Alabama and the way to help cure some of this distrust is to provide for complete transparency in the day to day operations of our government.

&uot;The bottom line is people have a right to know what their government is doing and this information should be easy to access,&uot; Ward said.

The task force is expected to begin work immediately and will draft legislation for the upcoming 2006 regular session to reform the Alabama open records law to allow the public easier access to government information and documents