Officials should open up about Laurel Bay issues

So far, the U.S. Department of Defense has said the right things about health concerns raised by teachers at its Laurel Bay schools.

However, how much it says might prove a truer test of veracity.

The Defense Department's schools division and Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort plan to complete an evaluation of indoor air quality and other conditions in the buildings by the end of the month. The tests come after teachers and staff reported an array of unspecified -- but apparently serious -- health conditions among those who have recently worked there.

Under any circumstances, close attention is due to ensure schoolchildren and public employees are not made sick by their surroundings. This particular effort merits extra scrutiny, given recent revelations about the contamination of drinking water at the Marine Corps' base at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Only now -- nearly three decades after fuel leaks first were discovered -- are some key documents getting into the hands of appropriate regulatory and investigative agencies, and Defense Department disclosure has, almost literally, required an act of Congress. It is against this backdrop that testing of the air, soil and water in and near the Laurel Bay schools has begun.

Col. John Snider, the air station's commanding officer, said he was determined to get answers -- and no one need doubt his sincerity because his children attend school at Laurel Bay.

But Snider isn't one of the scientists who will study these concerns, nor will he apparently decide what will be made public.

On that count, the Defense Department is not off to a great start.

First, it has refused to quantify or identify the specific maladies that prompted alarm or indicate how far back the illnesses stretch. The department need not -- indeed, should not -- disclose what teacher has what illness. But aggregated information can give the public a sense of the seriousness and scope of potential problems, not to mention, the basis for an informed conclusion about how to respond. It also would demonstrate a spirit of disclosure lacking in the Camp Lejeune fiasco.

Second, the Defense Department banned the Gazette from a March 3 meeting at which representatives of its schools division and the air station addressed staff members' concerns

The Defense Department's decision was based on the specious argument that media presence would violate teachers' privacy. But what legal expectation of privacy could there be between a teacher and an engineer? And even if there were, it should not apply to a group discussion about a taxpayer-funded building.

To his credit, Snider arranged a post-meeting interview with the officials who talked to the teachers and staff. Those officials seemed forthcoming, and a Defense Department spokeswoman in Washington has addressed follow-up questions submitted to her.

We hope, for the sake of Marine families and the civilians who work with them, that appearances and public relations are the biggest worries the Defense Department faces at Laurel Bay.

But even if that is the case, in light of Camp Lejeune, how are we to take the department at its word if its words are so closely guarded?