Colorado School Board Ordered to Release Closed-Door Meeting Records

Former technology director Harriett White won a victory on several of her claims in a lawsuit against her former employer, the Brush School District in Colorado. A district court judge has ordered the school board to release complete or partial records from 11 closed-door meetings conducted in violation of the Colorado Open Meetings Law. The lawsuit touches on nearly every executive session held by the school board during 2009.

Get the details here.

School board reaches settlement in newspaper suit

The Steamboat Springs School Board in Colorado agreed to pay $50,000 of The Steamboat Pilot & Today's attorney fees after a lawsuit stemming from the board's violation of open meetings laws. The board will also have to release minutes from that executive session in which its “notice was deficient in failing to state that the executive session would concern the release of the survey results. In addition, the notice was deficient in not identifying that the ‘personnel matter’ was specifically the performance of the superintendent.”

The Steamboat Springs School Board formally accepted a lawsuit settlement offer from the Pilot & Today on Monday.

The settlement was tentatively approved by board members last month on the heels of a March ruling by the Colorado Court of Appeals that the previous School Board violated the state’s Open Meetings Law by not properly announcing the intention of its executive session at a Jan. 8, 2007, meeting. As a result of the ruling and settlement offer, the district will pay $50,000 of the newspaper’s attorney fees and release the transcripts from the illegal meeting.

The motion to accept the settlement offer was approved 4-1 on Monday, with a couple of board members expressing satisfaction that the lawsuit is now behind them. Board member John DeVincentis was the only dissenting vote, but he wasn’t the only one displeased with the outcome.

More here.

Romanoff honored for televising of House sessions

Andrew Romanoff, former Colorado House speaker, will receive the Sue O'Brien Award for Public Service from the Colorado FOI Council for his efforts to facilitate live coverage of House proceedings, the Examiner reported.

Former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff is being honored for putting House sessions on television.

Romanoff, a Denver Democrat, will be given the Sue O'Brien Award for Public Service by the Colorado Freedom of Information Council on Thursday.

Romanoff led a campaign to establish a nonprofit broadcasting organization to provide live, streaming video coverage of proceedings on the House floor.

More here.

More state coverage of online availability survey

Survey: 65 percent of Minnesota government records online, Associated Press

When it comes to online access to state government records in Minnesota, the state is, well, slightly above average.

A survey by journalists and others found that 65 percent of the records checked were available online, compared to the national average of about 60 percent.

More here.

Tennessee not putting some public records online, Associated Press

While more and more government records are available with a few mouse clicks, Tennessee still does not provide some important state records and reports for free online.

A nationwide survey of state government information online found Tennessee, like many states, has no comprehensive database for state spending and doesn't put a variety of inspection reports online, including those for hospitals, child care centers and school buses and buildings.

More here.

Many key records available online, free in Colo., Associated Press

Coloradans can get a wide range of public records online at no charge, ranging from school test results to hospital inspection reports. But some key information is harder to find.

There's no single online source for school bus safety inspection reports, for example. And although death certificates are available online, it costs $9 more than getting them by mail or in person.

More here.

Public records easy to get in Arizona, study says, azfamily.com

When it comes to providing public records online, Arizona is one of the best in the nation.

A study by several journalism organizations found Arizona to be among the top 15 states in the nation for posting records on the internet.

More here.

SC 22nd in nation for online public records, Associated Press

Many of South Carolina's agencies are providing online access to public records - part of what appears to be a nationwide push to draw attention to the public's right to know what's going on in government.

Still, a new study shows that South Carolina trails 21 others that post more records online.

More here.

Parking tickets skyrocket in Denver, revenues flow in for city

FOI at Work:

CBS4 in Denver uncovered that the number of parking tickets issued by the city of Denver rose to more than 600,000, a 6 percent jump from the previous year. Revenue from the tickets hit nearly $20 million. The station also obtained documents showing "performance standards," usually known as quotas, indicating that employees issuing less than 80 tickets in a seven-hour shift need improvement.

More here.

Three steps needed for Colorado to follow Obama's lead

Chantell Taylor, director of the Colorado Ethics Watch, outlined three ways Colorado state and local government can show a commitment to transparency. These include implementing a policy for the retention of electronic records, adopting a fee waiver in the Colorado Open Records Act and setting maximum limits on fees charged for employee time spent retrieving public records.

As one of his first official acts, President Barack Obama issued an executive memorandum instructing members of his administration “to operate under principles of openness, transparency and of engaging citizens with their government.” There are a number of ways Colorado state and local government can follow suit and join the president in his commitment to an “unprecedented level of openness in government.”

To begin, the Colorado General Assembly should immediately adopt and implement a uniform policy for the members and their staff, setting minimum standards and guidelines for the retention of electronic records, including e-mail records in particular. Incredibly, there is currently no policy at all.

Instead, without any minimum requirements, members are encouraged to develop their own individual policies on retention of e-mails, make their own determinations as to what records are public, and regularly delete records that they think do not qualify as public.

More here.

Colorado Guv Sues for Cell Phone Records

This ought to be a rather high-profile test of the arguments surrounding the public records status of cell phones...

The Denver Post today sued Gov. Bill Ritter after the governor's refusal to turn over 19 months of cellphone records that would show some of who Ritter has called and been called by since taking office in 2007.

The newspaper claims it is entitled to a list of calls made and received by Ritter during the 19 months related to his work as governor.

Ritter only occasionally uses his state-issued cellphone but carries a second cellphone not provided by taxpayers. The governor's office has refused to allow Post reporters to see the itemized bills for that phone, arguing that it would invade the governor's privacy.

Attorneys for the paper disagree.

"It is obvious that if any high-ranking government executive may 'privatize' his conduct of public business by establishing a private account or dealing with private providers of communications technologies, it would allow government officials to unilaterally create a vast and unacceptable 'loophole' in the requirements" of the Colorado Open Records Acts, said the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit filed in Denver District Court, the newspaper filed two requests for the records, one on July 6 and the second July 28.

The first request asked for the itemized phone bill from Ritter's personal cellphone for January and February 2007.

The second request asked for 19 months of cellphone bills — from January 2007 through July 2008 — which reflect the official calls placed or received by Ritter during normal business hours.

More here.

E-Mail Meetings In Colorado...

Two Louisville residents have lodged a formal complaint with the Boulder Valley school board alleging members violated the state’s open-meetings law by using e-mail to discuss public business in private.

On several occasions in the past year, three or more members of the seven-member school board exchanged e-mails discussing issues related to the demolition, reconstruction and proposed preservation of Louisville Middle School, according to documents disclosed through a request under the Colorado Open Records Act.

Ty Gee, an attorney and longtime community activist, and John Leary, a former Louisville councilman, have demanded the board “take remedial action” by creating a policy to ensure “a violation does not occur again.”

“The school board should have known about the Open Meetings Act,” said Gee, who, along with Leary, has opposed demolition of the middle school’s historic facade. “If you’re an elected official, there are certain basics.”

More here.

Watching Them, Watching US

An interesting access question posed by a father in Colorado:

Every day, about 6,000 children take a bus to and from school in Greeley. On most of those buses are video cameras capturing their actions. The tape gives the district a tool to determine what to do if inappropriate behavior occurs.

Parents, however, aren't allowed to review the tape, and that leaves Mike Moskalski outraged. After his son was involved in a physical altercation on a bus in April and received a 10-day suspension from the bus, he wanted to review the tape.

Moskalski said his son was defending himself and did not start the fight. The other student received the same punishment. He wanted to see the tape to make sure. But Greeley/Evans School District 6 officials told him no.

"This is not really fair," he said.

Citing a federal student privacy law, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, officials from Greeley-Evans School District 6 say they cannot release the footage from buses to the public.

District officials would not comment about any specific case.

District 6 began retrofitting buses with video cameras about seven years ago. About 80 percent of the district's buses are fitted with cameras, with a cost of about $1,200 for each vehicle.

"Bus safety is very important," said Wayne Eads, chief operations officer for District 6. "Cameras are a way to protect students, to monitor what happens."

He said to allow a parent to view any footage, the district would have to either get releases from the parents of the other children on the tape or digitally blur out their faces, both of which are not financially realistic.

"This is about protecting the child," Eads said.

But wait a minute...this is not really the sort of record protected by FERPA....and come to think of it, are there not school bus videos I have seen in any number of states made public by FOI?

Of course, if police are involved, that's another matter, like here. Or here.
Help! If you have examples, send them along!

The rest of this story here.

It's Rather Annoying This Took A State Supreme Court...

...to tell officials in Colorad that a criminal indictment is a public record, but there you go:

The Colorado Supreme Court struck a resounding blow for open records on Monday when it ordered a judge to release details of an indictment of an Aurora man suspected in the disappearance of his 6-year-old daughter.

It's a shame, however, that something that should have been an ordinary matter of public record had to go all the way to the state Supreme Court. Indictments routinely have been available for public inspection in Colorado as a matter of law and tradition.

Arapahoe District Attorney Carol Chambers was wrong to try to keep the details of the document sealed, and we're glad the Supreme Court made a logical decision in the case.

We're speaking, of course, of the Aarone Thompson case, and a ruling by Arapahoe County District Judge Mark Hannen to keep most of the details of the allegations against her father under seal. Prosecutors argued the indictment was filled with information too shocking for the public to see, and worried about the ability to hold a fair trial for Aaron Thompson, father of the missing girl.

The authors of the indictment created the problem when they filled it with what the Supreme Court called "exhaustive narratives" of the case, far exceeding the "essential facts" that must be included in a grand jury indictment.

But the Court made it clear that the decision to load the indictment with "excessive" detail didn't give the court the right to keep it secret.

The matter got to the state Supreme Court only because of the efforts by The Denver Post and The Associated Press, which took legal action to force the question to a higher authority.

More here.