(Editor’s Note: This column was written in conjunction with Sunshine Week, which begins Sunday.)

The public has a right to know.

That is why public notices in newspapers are so important. Public notices provide citizens a window into government. An important premise found in both federal and local governments is that information about government activities must be accessible in order for the electorate to make well-informed decisions. Public notices in newspapers provide this sort of accessibility to citizens who want to know more about government activities.

Bottom line, a public notice is information that informs citizens of government or government-related activities that affect our everyday lives.

Meeting minutes, bid proposals and tax sales are all things that should be publicized through a public notice in the newspaper.

Last year, a city council in a Louisiana town cancelled its regularly scheduled meeting due to, according to the sign on the door, “non-notification in the __ News paper.”

The newspaper caught flak for it from at least one local citizen, who apparently interpreted the sign to mean the newspaper cancelled the meeting.

And that citizen, who had apparently planned to participate in a protest that night outside City Hall, threatened to protest the paper and its advertisers instead.

It’s amazing what chaos a few words can cause.

Louisiana’s open meetings law does not require publication of notice of a scheduled meeting. The public body is required to — at the least — post a notice of the meeting on the door of the principle office of the public body at least 24 hours in advance. The agenda is part of this notice.

Now I’m not sure if this particular City Council has adopted more stringent notification rules than the open meetings law. Maybe a public hearing that was on the agenda had to be publicized, and that was the issue when the notice wasn’t sent to the newspaper by the deadline set for public notices. But maybe it wasn’t.

The newspaper heard there wasn’t going to be a quorum of council members present anyway at this particular meeting. Or maybe council members just didn’t want to get caught up in the protest planned for that night.

The posting of public notices is a tradition that began hundreds of years ago when early civilizations posted notices in public squares, and it improved with the first publication of the first English language newspaper in 1665 — a court newspaper called The Oxford Gazette.

In America, the Acts of the First Session of the First Congress in 1789 required that all bills, orders, resolutions and congressional votes be published in at least three publicly available newspapers.

Our forefathers believed in the public’s right to know, and that right has been essential to our country’s way of life since day one. Our government governs with the consent of people, and this consent must be informed.

Newspapers are paid to publish public notices, guaranteeing that valuable newspaper space will be devoted to notifying the public.

Sandy Cunningham is publisher of L’Observateur.