Investigation Finds Felons Working in Higher Education

Since Utah enacted the Higher Education Criminal Background Checks bill, effective May 1, 2009, Weber State University's The Signpost found that eight individuals with felonies or serious misdemeanors were employed by the university. Three of those individuals no longer work for the school.

The law requires criminal background checks for new employees in higher education. Anyone applying for a position that would have "significant contact with a minor or a position that is security-sensitive" must submit to a criminal background check as a condition of employment.

Weber State University takes electronic fingerprints from applicants and sends them to the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification, using a federal criminal database, before making a final offer of employment.

Read more from the two-part investigative series: Part 1 and Part 2.

NFOIC Summit: Wisconsin FOIA roundup

State-by-state updates at the 2009 NFOIC Summit: Christa Westerberg of Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council provided a summary of her state's FOI news.

• Wisconsin has seen good legal developments because of court cases that clarifies what constitutes good notice and when quasi-government organizations are subject to open meetings and records laws.
• The state has no consistent retention policy on any records. The attorney general says agencies must have a policy, but it doesn't matter what's in it.
• Legislators are working on a shield law for reporters' notebooks and sources.
• We're trying to model Minnesota's policy for police records.
• The state could use a better fees policy. Fees are now issued at the discretion of the custodian so there's a lot of arbitrariness.
• The state legislature is allowed to hammer out the budget in some private committees. Two provisions in the proposed budget include: the expungement of certain felon records and the elimination of designating official state newspapers so that required government notices could just go online without being published in print publications.
  

NFOIC Summit: Public access threats

Richard J. H. Varn, director of the Coalition for Sensible Public Records Access and the chief information officer for the City of San Antonio, spoke on the threats to and values of public access. Here's part one of notes on his 2009 NFOIC Summit session:

Threats to public access:

• Identity theft and security: The problem with identity theft is not with public records. It would flourish even if all access was cut off. A social security number is only worth about 10 cents on the black market. Concerns over identity theft, however, had led to more restrictions to public access than any other issue in the past couple decades. When public identifiers are not made public, it is nearly impossible to distinguish one person from another. It leads to more false positives and false negatives.
• Implementing public policies by redacting the truth: Because people with criminal records have difficulty finding jobs, apartments, etc., there has been a trend to expunge convictions from public records. However, this doesn't hide the fact that someone has been convicted. It's still in the police blotter archives, and a fellow co-worker could definitely reveal a prior conviction that another employee tried to hide. Redaction doesn't solve the problem. What would solve it is an employability of felons act. Facts can still be acted on. These people need rights.
  
• Increased fees beyond marginal cost and self-funding portal: Florida, for example, passed a cost increase to help solve its budget problems.
• Security concerns lead to overclassification.
  
• Coalition failures: Exemptions for media aren't enough. Citizens should have rights to the same information, and coalitions should champion for them. These citizens who request records are, after all, sometimes valuable sources.
• Private technology, public business: Using private e-mail accounts to conduct public business is ever increasing.
• New technology, same old issues: Just because it's Twitter or the latest social networking fad doesn't mean anyone is excused from providing access and charging only marginal costs.
• Enforcement failures: Obviously, many state coalitions are struggling to add teeth to their state's FOI laws.

Bill to allow background checks on Ark. officials voted down

The Arkansas House voted down a bill that would have resulted in public criminal history checks on elected officials and candidates for public office, Arkansas Business reported. The information is still public but remains difficult to obtain and compile.

House lawmakers rejected Friday a bill by Rep. Dan Greenberg that would have made the criminal records of elected officials and candidates for public office more accessible to the public.

The bill, which advanced from the Judiciary Committee after three hearings, was voted down 33-56, with 11 members not voting. The bill would have allowed the release of an official's guilty and no-contest pleas, as well as any pending felony or misdemeanor charges filed in the past three years. The bill, which was opposed by Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, did not include traffic violations.

"There's nothing that would be revealed by this bill the public cannot access already," Greenberg, R-Little Rock, said. "The practical problem, as you may know, is for a person to collect this information at present, it would require someone to go to all 75 counties."

More here.

Coroner, autopsy reports exempt from Calif. Public Records Act

The Third District Court of Appeal upheld a superior court judge's decision to not force El Dorado County to release coroner and autopsy reports to Kathryn J. Dixon, a reporter planning to write a book on the murder of Elizabeth Cloer.

Coroner and autopsy reports from suspected homicide deaths are exempt from disclosure under California’s Public Records Act, the Third District Court of Appeal ruled yesterday.

Reasoning that the reports present a concrete and definite prospect of criminal law enforcement proceedings, the court rejected a former-California-attorney-turned-publisher’s request for records relating to a Sacramento woman whose bullet-riddled body was found in an open El Dorado County field in 1971.

Phillip Arthur Thompson was convicted in 2008 of the murder of Elizabeth Cloer after a 2003 analysis of DNA left at the scene tied him to the crime.

More here.

Auburn tries to protect workers who stole city equipment

The Post-Standard's FOIA request for the names of Auburn, N.Y., city employees who stole $10,000 of city property has been denied. The city attorney claims the names are considered part of a criminal investigation and therefore are exempt. However, that excuse does not seem to fall within one of the 10 exemptions laid out in the law, the Post-Standard maintains. Perhaps most suspicious is that the city promised the workers anonymity and their jobs in return for the stolen tools and equipment.

The city of Auburn appears to have violated the law in refusing to release the names of workers on the city payroll who stole $10,000 worth of city tools and equipment.

The sticky-fingered workers were promised anonymity and told they could keep their jobs if they returned the stolen property.

But under the state Freedom of Information Law, the public appears to have a clear right to their identities. Courts have ruled that the law trumps any promise of anonymity.

More here.

South Dakota Effort to Make Criminal Records More Accessible Fails

South Dakota landlords squared off Wednesday against the state court system and lost in a tussle over criminal records.

Landlords told the Senate Judiciary Committee that it's expensive and time consuming to get criminal background reports on prospective tenants because the court system doesn't offer that information on the Internet.

Criminal background reports on people are available to the public at clerks of court and through the state court system.

SB160 would have required the court system to provide a Web site for criminal history reports as soon as possible, and it would have limited the fee to $5 or the cost of providing the information, whichever was less. The bill was killed 6-1.

More here.

Wonder Why Missouri Wants to Keep Executioners Secret?

I'm beginning to understand the urgent need for secrecy here. As is so often the case, it is a convenient excuse for masking incompetence, corruption, heck, even criminal records...

Before a Missouri executioner could go to Indiana in 2001 to help federal authorities put mass killer Timothy McVeigh to death, he had to take care of one detail:

He needed permission from his probation officer to leave the state.

The request, by a licensed practical nurse from Farmington, set off alarms within the Missouri Division of Probation and Parole. At least one supervisor spoke out to an agency administrator.

"As I stated to you previously, it seems bizarre to me that we would knowingly allow an offender, on active supervision, to participate in the execution process at any level," she wrote.

Then again, bizarre is an understatement, as this graf shows:

In Missouri, a federal judge suspended the state's executions in 2006 after Doerhoff's testimony — from behind a screen to protect his identity — that he was dyslexic, did not record the actual amount of anesthetic delivered, sometimes used only half the suggested dose and gauged the depth of the anesthesia by watching facial expressions through a window.

But my favorite is the end:

The Missouri probation and parole administrator who confirmed Pinkley's request for travel obviously recognized the potential for controversy.

In one of the memos, she wrote, "It would be extremely problematic for David Pinkley and this department if the media got wind of this."

You think? Read the whole thing here, including the Post-Dispatch's wonderful explanation of why they are naming names...

Public Denied Info Under Mass. Bill...

If only our elected officials were as concerned with our right to know...as they are about protecting criminal records from those who have every reason to know about them...

People with criminal records would be able to more quickly shield that information from prospective employers under legislation filed Friday by Gov. Deval Patrick, who says the change will give them a better chance to become productive citizens.

Patrick's proposed overhaul of the state Criminal Offender Record Information or "CORI" system is aimed at giving people a second chance after they've served prison or probation terms, and even after being cleared of criminal charges.

"It improves their opportunity to get employment," said Kevin Burke, Patrick's secretary of public safety.

Currently, people convicted of felonies can seek to seal their criminal record after 15 years. Patrick's bill shortens the wait to 10 years, and shortens the wait on misdemeanor convictions from 10 to five years -- if the person stays out of trouble.

Misdemeanor violations of restraining orders would remain unchanged at 10 years, while sex offenders would never be eligible to seal records.

More here.