Under the leadership of Chairman Larry Rhoden, the House State Affairs Committee voted Wednesday to keep too many of South Dakota's public records closed to the public.

This kind of leadership we could do without.

Rep. Rhoden, R-Union Center, and six other Republicans who were doing the bidding of Gov. Mike Rounds, voted against SB189, a bill to establish a presumption of openness in public records. That's the same presumption that the citizens of 49 other states enjoy. Every other state, and the federal government, operates under the assumption that public records are open to the public unless there's a reason they should be confidential.

Voting to kill SB189 were: Rhoden, Joel Dykstra, Tom Brunner, Tom Deadrick, Shantel Krebs, Tim Rave and Charles Turbiville. Brunner and Turbiville are also West River legislators. Krebs is married to Rounds' press secretary, so her opposition to the bill is, if no less odious to us, at least more understandable.

Rhoden justified his vote with his belief that government in South Dakota is already open. For elected leaders and state officials like himself, it may well be open enough. But for the average South Dakotan, who relies on the media to inform him or her about what state government is doing, it decidedly is not.

At some point, every newspaper reporter has run into a hurdle, roadblock or brick wall over access to public information. A state media project in 2002 designed to reveal that lack of access was all too successful. Officials in only seven counties provided the requested records.

A spokesman for Gov. Rounds insists that government officials do their best to provide open records. But the level of interest in open-records legislation during this session, the close 7-6 committee vote, and the on-the-job experience of far too many South Dakota journalists suggests that their "best" is not good enough.

We prefer the leadership displayed on this issue by Attorney General Larry Long. Long's perspective on open government may be traceable to his upbringing as the son of a newspaper publisher. He led a state-wide open-records task force that sought legislative solutions to the questions of exactly what constitutes a public record and how to resolve disputes over them.

We applaud the state Senate for passing SB189 earlier this session and the six House committee members who voted for it: Bob Faehn, Joni Cutler, Maggie Gillespie, Dale Hargens, Kathy Miles and Garry Moore.

On this issue, the state Legislature could use more public servants like them and fewer like Rhoden, Brunner and Turbiville.