The Importance of "Sunshine Laws"

Maura McCaughey is the current Observer Corps Program Manager for the League of WomenVoters of Hudson. She is a past president of the Hudson League, and her involvement in the League of Women Voters brings her career full circle, because her first job out of law school was with the General Counsel’s Office of the Federal Election Commission, where the League was well known as a non-partisan political organization. She has practiced law with several small firms and has lived with her family in Washington, D.C., Wilmington, North Carolina, and here in Hudson since 1997. She also fondly recalls being recognized by the Monroeville Pennsylvania Rotary Club when she was her high school newspaper’s editor-in-chief.
Dr. Mimi Becker has been a member of the League of Women Voter for more than 50 years.
She was co-founder of the Northern Portage Co. LWV and has served on the Board of LWV of
Hudson since 2017. She is currently Co-Chair of the League’s Climate Crisis & Environmental
Sustainability Work group. She holds a BA in Sociology-Anthropology from Carleton College, a
Masters degree in Environmental Policy Sciences & Economics, and a Ph.D. in Environmental
Sciences & Sustainable Development from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the
Environment. She has been the recipient of the University of New Hampshire’s International
Engagement Award (2005) and in 2015 was the recipient of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Mimi learned early that being a scientist engaged in problem-solving in
our democracy required knowledge of governance, science communication, and finding ways
for multiple stakeholders to collaborate over time. In all cases, participating parties required
access to relevant information from decision makers to accomplish the goals of a given
particular project. An early lesson in each project was “how to obtain the documents of the
case”!