Last week was Sunshine Week. No, not your spring break in Mexico, this is a week devoted to open government.

It’s kind of an annual checkup. News organizations and watchdog groups released reports on American government transparency. There were rallies and information campaigns; that kind of thing.

This year, Sunshine Week fell on March 16-22. So if you picked up a paper or browsed a news site, you likely read a story about how we fall short of full accountability in our country.

And Wisconsin, which boasts some of the weakest open government laws in the Midwest, also has a long way to go.

In each of our border states ­­– Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Michigan – either an open records or open meetings law violation is a misdemeanor, but in Wisconsin, neither are.

We don’t take open government seriously here. Thats a problem.

Our state’s top lawyer, Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, hasn’t pursued an open government case in his seven-plus years in office, the Gannett Wisconsin Investigative Team reported March 14.

Instead, he defers those decisions to local District Attorney offices who are often understaffed or unfamiliar with open government laws.

That means local D.A. offices are charged with prosecuting open meetings and records violations alongside other crimes.

And I don’t envy prosecutors. Between 2011 and 2012, 30 percent of the state’s prosecutors and assistant prosecutors left their posts. That’s a pretty hefty turnover. Or just burnout.

Only five county D.A. offices in the state are fully staffed, according to another I-Team story published in April. Statewide D.A. offices are staffed at only 67 percent.

In 2003, a Fond du Lac man crashed his ’96 Firebird into a tree at 117 mph, slicing the car in half and killing 18-year-old passenger Benjamin Westerman of Kewaskum.

Although investigators found the driver of the car drunk, the case sat untouched until a reporter reminded Sheboygan County District Attorney Joe DeCecco five years later.

DeCecco said he got sidetracked with other cases; courts didn’t resolve the crime until 2010.

Yep, he forgot.

And still our top lawyer is sloughing open government cases onto already swamped local attorneys. Seems like he wants these cases to go away.

Also seems like it’s working.

Wisconsin D.A.s haven’t issued a citation for a single open records violation, and have only written seven tickets for open meetings law breaches since 2009.

These laws are in place for a reason. If a lawmaker or records clerk doesn’t think anyone is paying attention, or the law won’t be enforced, they might try to get away with more than they could in broad daylight.

And no, things aren’t better on a national level.

I don’t spend much time shaking a clenched fist at the screwballs in D.C. Not worth my windbags. But while I’m on the subject, Obama claimed his government would be the most transparent in history before he took office.

To say he hasn’t lived up to that promise is an understatement:
• The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers (six) than all other administrations combined (three). Under the Espionage Act, a 97-year-old law, no less.
• The Center for Effective Government issued failing grades to seven of the 15 federal agencies it reviewed in its annual report.
• Secrecy is trending upward. The Obama Squad censored or flat out refused to release more documents last year than all previous years in the   White House, according to an Associated Press report released during Sunshine Week.
• Fifty of 101 federal agencies still haven’t updated regulations to comply with Freedom of Information Act amendments passed by congress seven years ago.

And so on.

You have a right to this information. You shouldn’t need a desk in a government office to get the full picture. I know it seems daunting to slog through red tape to find out what’s happening. Hang in there.

Let’s open the blinds already.