Think about the big stories that have touched our region during the past couple of months.

Many residents of the Heritage Place apartment complex in Steubenville have been without heat since late last year. The ongoing issues have led to court appearances and growing frustrations among the occupants, who have, in addition to finding ways to battle off the cold, had to deal with broken pipes and other concerns associated with the problem.

Weirton, meanwhile, has been suffering with water issues for the past several months. While the community appears largely to have turned the corner, questions about what led to the problems and what city officials are planning to do to improve the system remain.

Mingo Junction has seen more than its share of issues during the past year — from current village officials learning that former village officials did not place a tax renewal on the ballot yet continued to collect money from residents, to questions about its fire department.

We’ve been able to report about each of these situations and every other issue that affects the Tri-State Area thanks to the ability journalists have to ask questions of officials and dig into public records.

That’s important to remember, especially now, because Sunday marks the start of the annual Sunshine Week.

It’s about openness in government, not just about press relations, though it’s often the institutionalized journalist who’s on the front lines of records requests and preventing illegal closed-door meetings of public bodies.

Sunshine Week, which reminds everyone that open government is good government, is an effort led by the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida College of Communications and is funded, in part, through a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Recognition happens during the week where March 16 falls — that’s National Freedom of Information Day.

March 16 also is the birthday of James Madison, who is remembered as the father of the Constitution and, as a strong supporter of the Bill of Rights, was a believer that a free press and open access to information would make government the most responsive to the people it serves, according to the United States Census Bureau.

Let that sink in — especially when members of the press are under constant attack, not only from those whom the nation’s reporters are committed to questioning and taking to task, but from those they serve in the general public.

We live in a country that depends on public input to make government work and be responsive. We are not given to simply accepting the dictates of our leaders, but requiring those leaders to be honest in their dealings with the formation of rules and regulations and public policy. The stories often are not pretty, but they are the ones that must be told for us to be able to enjoy the freedoms we have as Americans.

Those are the reasons that Sunshine Laws have been written — to keep the light of day shining on every recess of every public government organization. This means protecting investigating and inquiring journalists as well as whistleblowers, the people with knowledge of situations in government or the private sector who serve the greater common good by bringing to light facts that otherwise might go unseen.

And while it is a week for private citizens and the journalists who act on their behalf to recognize their rights to seek information from their government and, if necessary, use Freedom of Information Act requests to acquire that information, it must not be about right or left, Republican or Democrat or whether you live in a red state or a blue state — it’s about openness and honesty, and calling attention to the right to know and the responsibility of fighting to maintain that right while treating it with respect.

In an era where every institution, from the office of the president to the school board, might just want to do business without the pesky inquiries and intervention of the general public, it is good to remember that people employ the government, and not the other way around.

That makes the free flow of information and response to legitimate inquiry necessary if we are to preserve the nation as the beacon of freedom that it always has been.