It’s bad enough the degree of contempt with which government officials sometimes treat their own constituents when it comes to granting them access to information.

Government officials at all levels — backed by vague and insufficient state transparency laws and a passive state Committee on Open Government — often go out of their way to ignore requests for government documents, deny access to public information, or unreasonably delay the release of information by exploiting gaps in the law.

That’s bad enough.

Now one member of the state Legislature, Assemblyman Chris Burdick, a Democrat from the Westchester area, apparently has made a proposal to actually punish citizens who........

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