We commend the efforts of the Senate Ethics Committee to put some teeth into Mississippi’s Open Meetings Law.

Last week, the Ethics Committee approved a bill that would increase the penalties for violations and make the public officials who break the law pay for their misconduct, not the taxpayers.

The present maximum fine for violations of the Open Meetings Law is miniscule — $100. Even though the penalty is theoretically increased by allowing a successful complainant to recover his attorney’s fees and other legal costs, the present law says both the fine and the court costs are assessed against the public body, rather than the individuals who committed the violation. That means that when a county board of supervisors, city board or school board illegally shuts out taxpayers from monitoring their actions, it’s the victims who wind up paying financially for it. That doesn’t make any sense.

Under the proposal, the fine would be raised to at least $500 and no more than $1,000 per person. Even better, it spells out that the individuals who broke the law have to pay the fine plus the other side’s court costs. It forbids the public body from picking up the tab.

This change is being spurred by the well-publicized case last year of two members of the state’s Transportation Commission having a dinner meeting with Madison County officials. The gathering was an obvious attempt to bypass the third member of the commission, Dick Hall, in whose district the proposed road project lies. Hall filed a complaint with the State Ethics Commission and won.

That case got a lot of ink, but it’s by far not the only example. A series of stories, compiled by Mississippi journalists working with the Associated Press and the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information, documents that a culture of government secrecy still pervades some 35 years after legislation was adopted declaring openness was the public policy of the state.