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It falls to William Browning of the Greenwood Commonwealth to channel the call of the GOB in closing (anti-reform) argument with Officials say secrecy sometimes needed in government affairs.

GREENWOOD — A man calls the police after he thinks he hears a woman screaming next door. He tells the dispatcher he thinks his neighbor’s wife is being beaten.

Police show up to find children simply roughhousing and screaming in the backyard, but by law they file an incident report. The local newspaper obtains the report, runs a story about the incident and the man at the house gets falsely accused of being a wife-beater by his community.

A major manufacturer is planning to build a new facility in an economically depressed region. The region’s newspaper reports the possibility, and soon local politicians are bombarding the company with promises and requests. The manufacturer – which could have brought 400 jobs to the area – decides to move to another state where it is better able to control the flow of information.

These are just two scenarios that defenders of exemptions in Mississippi’s sunshine laws cite as reasons to limit public access to some information.

Browning interviews Trey Bobinger, a lobbyist for the Mississippi Sheriffs Association, who says,

“These incident reports are delicate territory. And while the media absolutely has a responsibility to the public to let them know what’s going on, I don’t think anyone in the public is saying, ‘I want to know what’s going on even if it prohibits law enforcement from catching criminals.’ “

Bobinger thinks calls to make incident reports public are overblown, that the current level of information-release to media across the state “has not been a problem,” and that sheriffs generally have “very good” relationships with local media. “I’m not saying there hasn’t been problems in the past, but when they do pop up, they’re isolated.”

He just doesn’t see any reason for the press to, um, press: “During meetings on the subject, both sides can usually agree that there is not a huge problem. That being said, if the law as it stands is not causing any widespread problems, why the push to change it?”

Echoing Bobinger’s lahdidah is David Rumbarger, president and CEO of Tupelo’s Community Development Foundation, whom Browning identifies as “instrumental” in helping Tupelo land a Toyota plant last year.

Toyota expects to employ 2,000 at the factory, ultimately paying $20 an hour in an area that has been hit hard by the loss of furniture manufacturing.

When its search began, Toyota let it be known up front, Rumbarger said, that it hoped economic development representatives and civic leaders would respect its confidentiality.

“That was nothing surprising or new,” Rumbarger said. “These guys, these industries, they like to make their decisions without the pressure of politicians, but also without the pressure of the public. They’re private organizations whose goal at the end of the day is to improve their bottom line.”

Interestingly, Rumbarger claims that he went to the Daily Journal “early on” to ask that the local paper respect Toyota’s confidentiality in its reporting. “And they respected that request.”

But this apparently comes as a surprise to DJ editor Lloyd Gray, who tells Browning, “They may be giving us credit for knowing more than we did.”

“We had nothing definitive about Toyota coming to the area,” Gray said in explaining the paper’s coverage. “But I can say we didn’t do a lot of speculative reporting.”

Although Gray said he had no specific conversation with Rumbarger about the need for secrecy, “we are not in the business of sabotaging these type of things intentionally.”

Rumbarger thinks that the Tennessee and Arkansas towns that Toyota also considered “got caught up in the hype,” while Mississippi and Tupelo “kinda kept their heads low. And we were able to land these guys while those other places didn’t.”

So there you have it: the last installment of “Mississippi: The Secret State.” I’ll give my own response to the series next, but since these stories will quickly disappear behind firewalls it takes ridiculous determination, not to mention fees, to surmount, I wanted to stash their jists here where you’ll be able to find them anytime you like, easily and for free.

GOBs just hate that kind of thang, you know . . .