This divide in perception of national and local officialdom reminds me of a similar dichotomy: distrust of "the media" but a fundamental faith in your local newspaper. Citizens feel closer to their mayor or first selectman or morning paper.

However, what Connecticut Post reporters are finding, as we ask for information that by law is public, is that local officials can be as secretive as federal officials.

Like hundreds of other newspapers in the country, we are joining in the annual Sunshine Week endeavors to underscore the importance of an informed citizenry. Starting today, we will show you:

* Court clerks and lawyers who want to keep jurors secret.

* Emergency response officials refusing to turn over documents even though federal and state Freedom of Information laws say they must. A tip of my hat to Ansonia City Clerk Madeline Battone, the local official most helpful in lawfully providing the emergency plan to a reporter. ? Local city and town attorneys overruling police chiefs on releasing pistol permit applications even though the state Freedom of Information Commission has ruled they are public documents. If this is Sunshine Week, then these city attorneys work on the dark side of the moon. Too many of them too often love hiding information from the citizens they are paid to serve. What's a good newspaper to do but haul them up to the FoI Commission in a formal complaint against them for violating the people's right to know.

Public officials are supposed to be serving the public. When they decide they can hide information, who will be the public's champion? The local paper, that's who.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors is the prime sponsor of Sunshine Week. It commissioned a poll that shows only 25 percent of respondents believe the federal government is either "very open" or "somewhat open," while 69 percent said it's either "somewhat secretive" or "very secretive."

We begin our Sunshine Week coverage with an examination of procedures in Connecticut's federal District Courts. Court clerks are barring the public from asking who is serving on juries. District judges, it seems, were unaware of this even though the rules emanate from District Court headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees "the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury." How do we know if a jury is impartial if we don't know who the jurors are?

It is fundamental to the judicial process in a democratic form of government such as ours that the public is entitled to know who is acting for it, who is meting out justice for it, and who is deciding whether a fellow-citizen's life, liberty or property will be forfeited or impaired on account of a crime committed against it. I proudly borrow those words from the late Ralph G. Elliot of Hartford, the First Amendment lawyer others watched in awe as he argued brilliantly in a court of law.

He'd quote the U.S. Supreme Court that knowing the jurors who are making life and death decisions, "enhances the quality and safeguards the integrity of the fact-finding process, with benefits to both the defendant and to society as a whole."

Setting up a system of secret jurors is nothing more than a wholesale miscarriage of American justice. Let's hope Connecticut's federal judges rein in their clerks.

Please read our coverage today, tomorrow and Tuesday and remember that you have a right to know.

James H. Smith is the editor of the Connecticut Post. Reach him at 203-330-6325 or at jsmith@ctpost.com.