Anne Mullin O’Connor
2025
John P. McMeel Distinguished Service to Journalism Award
By Steve Key
Anne Mullin O’Connor interpreted a governor’s directive and a few pages of legislation to create a state agency that has more than ably served the public, the media and government entities to hold Indiana’s elected and public officials accountable.
When seven Indiana daily newspapers combined efforts to develop a series of articles titled “State of Secrecy,” which documented widespread ignorance of or disregard for the public’s right to obtain basic government documents, Gov. Frank O’Bannon responded in 1998 by issuing an executive order creating the position of public access counselor. He reached into the staff of Attorney General Jeff Modisett to name a deputy attorney general to this new post. It was Anne Mullin O’Connor.
The next Indiana General Assembly passed legislation to make the Office of Public Access Counselor a permanent public agency. With that legislation, based on Gov. O’Bannon’s order, O’Connor established an entity that has been used as a starting point for several other states’ efforts to make state and local governments’ actions more transparent to their citizens.
Beth Murphy, former Indianapolis News and Star reporter and editorial board member, lauded O’Connor’s achievements in a letter nominating her for the John P. McMeel Distinguished Service to Journalism Award. The award honors individuals for outstanding career contributions that support Indiana journalism in ancillary means.
“Anne took the courageous step to assume a new state government post that required her to hold her fellow officials accountable,” Murphy wrote. “In her five years on the job, she fielded 8,400 inquiries. Her steady and impartial handling of the office earned her respect from the press and public officials alike.”
O’Bannon created the position to ensure a commitment to an open government. O’Connor’s experience in providing legal opinions to state agencies on their responsibilities under the state’s public access laws made her an imminently qualified candidate for the position.
O’Connor created the protocols and forms to handle both formal and informal requests to the public access office. The questions concerned the rights of Hoosiers to either attend and observe meetings of the governing bodies of state and local government units or to inspect or copy public records of those government units. Answering these required O’Connor to apply the Open Door Law, the Access to Public Records Act or numerous other provisions sprinkled throughout the Indiana Code.
“She set the tone for impartiality in rendering her opinions,” wrote Stephen Key, retired executive director and general counsel for the Hoosier State Press Association, in his nominating letter. “She neither favored the bureaucrats nor citizens in disputes brought before her, but calmly applied the appropriate statutes to the situation before her and delivered her opinion as to whether the government unit could deny the record or close the door to the public or whether they should make the record available or open the meeting room doors. In gray areas, she followed the legislative philosophy of construing the laws liberally in favor of government transparency.”
Though she left the public access post after five years, O’Connor returned to work for the state attorney general’s office under one of Modisett’s successors, Greg Zoeller. In addition to giving legal advice to state agencies, O’Connor led a series of local educational programs across the state in partnership with the public access counselor’s office and the Hoosier State Press Association. The partnership sought to educate local government officials and the public on the obligations of government and rights of the public and media to access information under Indiana law.
She also helped draft a 40-page-plus handbook on the state’s public access laws, which is still in use and updated periodically. The handbook includes the public access statutes and commentary, and examples to make the legal jargon understandable for the public.
“The publication was in great part Anne’s handiwork,” Zoeller wrote in his letter supporting O’Connor’s nomination for the award. “Her experience over time led to a greater appreciation of the importance of the need for continued vigilance to protect the public’s right to information from their government. She also helped me have a greater understanding of the obligation of all who serve in government to seek to earn the trust of the governed, while the governed are never required to fully trust their government.”
A lifelong resident of Indianapolis, O’Connor graduated from the Indiana University McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis in 1989. Previously, she graduated magna cum laude from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, with a degree in public administration.
She is married to Michael O’Connor, and they are the parents of Mary Catherine O’Connor and Eileen Marie O’Connor.
Away from work, O’Connor is a distinguished fellow of the Indianapolis Bar Foundation and a member of the Indianapolis Bar Association. She also serves on the Scecina Memorial High School Board and has served on the Ransburg YMCA Center Advisory Board.
When O’Connor left the public access counselor’s office in 2003, she served two years as chief counsel for the Indiana Department of Transportation. She also was general counsel for the Indianapolis Airport Authority from 2002 to 2009.
After her return to the attorney general’s office, she served as a deputy attorney general until 2016. She then was an attorney for the Office of Corporation Counsel for the Consolidated City of Indianapolis and Marion County.
Since 2023, she has been general counsel for the Health & Hospital Corporation of Marion County in Indianapolis.
When O’Connor left the position of public access counselor in 2002, The Indianapolis Star praised her in an editorial titled “Access advocate passes bright torch.”
“We congratulate her for showing the temerity and integrity to perform a government job that makes government uncomfortable,” the editorial board wrote.
The Indiana Coalition for Open Government, a citizen-based advocacy group, also noted how well she operated the office she created and implored the governor to quickly fill the position with someone “with at least the same efficiency, responsiveness, and dedication O’Connor displayed.”
Her decisions helped journalists observe the meetings and track down the facts to inform the public. It’s important to note that, year after year, the majority of requests for assistance came not from the media but from citizens of Indiana.
“I don’t think Anne ever liked the moniker, but I have referred to her as the George Washington of the office,” said Key. “Not only did she create the position, almost out of whole cloth, but her manner of operating the office with no bias toward one or the other side was a legacy that she handed down to those who followed her in that office.”
As Zoeller noted, “The early leadership in her public service as public access counselor led to a strong foundation in protecting freedom of information in Indiana.”