South Texas sheriff takes on state agency official in felony open records fight

from the AMERICAN-STATESMAN:

A Nueces County skirmish over open records could land an Austin state agency official in prison for up to 10 years.

Or it could leave several Nueces County officials looking foolish.

[...]

Adan Muñoz Jr., executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, has been charged with two felony counts of misuse of official information — a crime that typically pertains to public servants who use insider government information to benefit themselves, friends or supporters.

Muñoz's alleged crime? In February, after Nueces County Jail inmate Samuel Salazar killed himself, Muñoz released the prisoner's jail screening form, which is designed to identify potentially suicidal prisoners. ...

The release angered Nueces County Sheriff Jim Kaelin, who said the information should have been kept secret while his office and the Texas Rangers investigated the death.

Kaelin complained to Muñoz's bosses — the nine governor-appointed commissioners on the jail standards panel — but after they cleared Muñoz of wrongdoing, the sheriff pursued criminal charges.

Read more here.

Kagan sought secrecy in 4 of 5 open government cases

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's arguments as solicitor general in several cases on government secrecy were at odds with a promise of transparency made by her boss and top client, President Barack Obama.

In four of five cases she dealt with involving the Freedom of Information Act, Kagan argued in favor of secrecy, Justice Department documents show. In those four lawsuits, the Supreme Court took her side and let lower court rulings in the government's favor stand.

...

In the most widely publicized freedom of information case, Kagan successfully argued that the Supreme Court should overturn a New York appeals court ruling that directed the government to release photographs of foreign detainees being abused by their U.S. captors. The American Civil Liberties Union sought the photos; Obama and the Pentagon opposed their release.

Read more here.

Missouri Senate candidate calls for lawmakers to open records to public

JEFFERSON CITY, MO. -- U.S. Senate Candidate Robin Carnahan called for the records of federal lawmakers to be open to the public.

During a campaign stop Monday in Jefferson City, Carnahan called for an expansion of the Freedom of Information Act.

The federal open-records law currently applies to the white house and executive agencies, but not to the U.S. House and Senate.

Read more here.

Justice Scalia Says Democracy Requires "Civic Courage"

"Trust but verify, I like that," said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anontin Scalia during the oral arguments in the case of Doe v. Reed, a case to decide whether the signature petitions to overturn Washington state's R-71 are public records and can be disclosed.

Justice Scalia's statements hint that the state public records law will prevail. He noted that voting was public for the first century of U.S. history, "you either did it raising your hand or by voice, or later, you had a ballot that was very visibly red or blue so that people knew which party you were voting for -- the fact is that running a democracy takes a certain amount of civic courage. And the First Amendment does not protect you from criticism or even nasty phone calls when you exercise your political rights to legislate, or to take part in the legislative process."

Click here for more, including transcripts of the oral arguments.

For more background on the case, click here.

Make Public Information Free and Online From Its Creation

"The test of right-to-know laws is the accessibility to the information that public officials don't want to give you," writes J.H. Snider in an opinion piece for The Washington Post.

Snider details the difficulties and struggles he's encountered trying to obtain public information from officials in Maryland.

He argues the state should adopt legislation that makes information online and free to the public from the moment of its creation. He also suggests document creation be separated from control. "Until now, the only practical option was to give the foxes control of the chicken coop; that is, creators of public records also had control of access to them," writes Snider. "But with the advent of the Internet, this argument no longer holds." An independent body could be used to archive and post materials online, suggests Snider.

New Mexico Attorney General Says Governor Potentially Violated Open Records Laws

New Mexico Attorney General Gary King says Gov. Bill Richardson's office may have violated the state's open records laws when it did not disclose the names of workers who lost their jobs, the agencies they worked for or their salaries in response to news media requests for that information. Richardson disagrees with the attorney general's opinion.

Read more here.

CJR Debate: What Should Remain Private in a World where Everything could be Public?

The Columbia Journalism Review challenged the blogosphere to debate the question: What should remain private in a world where everything could be public?

The question stems from the Georgia House's unanimous passage of a bill that prohibits all but credentialed press members from viewing crime scene photos. Even the press, though, cannot remove or copy the photos and must view them under the supervision of a Georgia Bureau of Investigations records custodian. Legislators moved to pass the bill after a Hustler true-crime writer made an open records request to view the autopsy report and crime scene photographs of 24 year-old Meredith Emerson, who was murdered while hiking near the Appalachian Trail in 2008. The photos are said to depict Emerson's nude, decapitated body.

The Columbia Journalism Review argues the issues raised by the crime scene photograph requests should be made on a case-by-case basis.

To join the debate, click here or post a comment to our blog.

Editorial: "Public Records are Public Records"

Recent assaults on police officers have spawned proposed bills in the Washington legislature that would prohibit a law enforcement officer's month and year of birth and official photograph from being disclosed to the public, although the news media would still have access to it.

The Spokesman-Review editorializes that such a strategy is an unacceptable precedent and that the media should not have selective privileges. Instead, public records should remain public records.

For more, click here.

Oklahoma Attorney General Opinion Leaves Agencies with Discretion to Release Employees' Birth Dates

Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson has released an opinion that leaves it to government agencies to decide whether to release public employees' birth dates. The opinion states government agencies have the discretion to determine whether the release of an employee's birth date falls within the exemption to the state's Open Records Act that allows records to be kept confidential if releasing them would be an "unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

The opinion came in response to Oklahoma City's refusal to release the birth date of the city's Weed and Seed program director, Ed Martin, who was placed on administrative leave after city officials found federal grant funds had been mismanaged. The Oklahoman, arguing it is impossible to match common names without a birth date, sought Martin's birth date in order to conduct background research after he was identified as part of the investigation.

For more information, click here.

Examining the Breadth of Sunshine in the Sunshine State

A Florida representative has asked the state attorney general to determine if a regional economic development organization is subject to the state's open records and meeting laws.

Florida's Great Northwest, an economic development group designed to push workforce development in 16 northwest Florida counties, was not created by law or public agency, but it does receive federal and state money. The group maintains that it is exempt from the open meeting and open records law.

For more information, click here.

Pennsylvania Enjoys Signal Improvement on its Right-to-Know Law Anniversary

As the one-year anniversary of Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know Law approaches, open records advocates are hailing the improvements the Commonwealth has made under the new law.

The new law provides a first-stage appeal with the taxpayer-funded open records office, whose lawyers issue binding opinions. It also established a new presumption in the law that almost all records are open unless the government proves otherwise.

While the improvements are being praised, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes there have also been criticism of some rulings the office acknowledged as mistakes, tensions with the Governor's administration, budget cut fears, and concerns that the new process is bogging down instead of speeding up the process.

Learn more here.

New Jersey Use-of-Force Reports are Public Records

A New Jersey appeals court panel held that police use-of-force reports are public records, upholding a 2008 Superior Court ruling that West Milford must turn over the reports to Martin O'Shea, an open-records activist.  

The town sought exemption for the records under New Jersey's Public Records Act as "criminal investigatory records," but that argument was rejected.  

More here. 

Landmark Payout in Washington State for Public Records Law Violations

The Washington Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) will pay $525,000 to three girls abused by their foster father for wrongfully withholding public records from them.  

The payout stems from a lawsuit filed by three girls who endured years of abuse at the hands of their foster father, despite complaints filed with the state's Child Protective Services.  When the girls' attorney noticed documents missing in their records request, they sued for violations of the open records laws.   A King County Superior Court judge agreed that DSHS had violate the Public Records Act by improperly withholding records from the girls.  

DSHS maintains that it did not intentionally withhold any records, but that records were missing due to technical errors in response to a voluminous records request.

The payout is the largest sum DSHS has paid in a public records case.

Get more information here. 

Rating the Responsiveness of Florida School Districts

Non-profit Sunshine Review recently conducted its Back-to-School guide for parents regarding the responsiveness of the state's school systems.  Although they found some exceptional cases like Orange County Public Schools, it also found instances where the records were difficult to obtain either because of cryptic responses, expensive costs, and bureaucratic attitudes. 

Check out the details here. 

  

Washington Task Force to Consider an Open Records Board

The Washington state attorney general and state auditor launched a task force to consider how to create a publicly-funded open-records board or commission to decide open-records and open-meetings quickly and outside of court.   The task force includes representatives from the state legislature, government, unions, lawyers and citizen activists.  The task force will craft a recommendation for lawmakers to consider in January.  

For more information about the task force and the Pennsylvania and Connecticut models being considered, click here.  

Open Records Victory in Kentucky

The Kentucky Open Government Blog reports on the victory of Kentucky New Era reporter Sarah Hogsed who had filed a records request for restaurant inspection reports with the Pennyrile District Health Department.

Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway said the health department subverted the intent of the Open Records Act and took the opportunity to clarify Kentucky law on open records, as reported by the blog:

The opinion said the district's excuse for the delay – absence of staff – was not sufficient. The opinion added “in the interest of absolute clarity,” that those who ask for public records cannot be required to submit their requests on preprinted forms, or sign forms in the presence of an agency employee; that receipt of records no longer requires on-site inspection; that agencies may recover only their actual costs of reproducing public records, not including staff time, if the records are to be used for a noncommercial purpose, including use by a newspaper or periodical. The department had indicated that it considered the paper a commercial interest. "We suppose the notion that the news media act in the public interest had escaped the health department," the opinion said.

A Kentucky Bill Would Make State Retirement Benefits Trigger Open Records Compliance

From the Kentucky Open Government Blog comes this report about Kentucky Rep. Arnold Simpson, D-Covington, who has pre-filed a bill that would make any organization whose employees get state retirement benefits subject to the Kentucky Open Records Act.

The bill stems from two organizations who claimed they were exempt from the open records act even though they receive more than 25 percent of their budgets from public funds, the law's threshold for public inspection.

Some N.J. clerks 'playing keep-away' with public records.

The Government Records Council in New Jersey has ruled on 1,503 denial-of-access complaints since 2002, and many of the rulings favor those complaining, The Star-Ledger reported. In some cases, rulings are finally granting citizens access to records they requested two years ago, records that should have been released within a week of the request. "Most of the time, they just want to keep people from getting the records in time for the next meeting or the next election," says attorney Walter Luers, who has won OPRA lawsuits against several municipalities." The people on the inside don't want the people on the outside to get the information." Not only is OPRA flawed in how clerks are handing requests, but the GRC panel is also missing two members, which has caused it to cancel meetings and thereby increase its backlog.

There are 47 items on the agenda, and in a small meeting room in Trenton, on a Tuesday morning, the Government Records Council is slogging its way through the list of complaints from citizens who have been thwarted in their attempts to access public records.

An hour into the session, it's clear: New Jersey's Open Public Records Act is flawed.

Ruling after ruling by executive director Catherine Starghill goes against agencies that have denied -- wrongfully -- public access to their records. In the GRC's final orders, municipal clerks, board secretaries and other record custodians are found to be guilty of wide-ranging and unnecessary OPRA violations.

More here.

State pays over $81,500 to newspapers

The Wisconsin Department of Administration paid the Journal Sentinel $51,256 and the Lakeland Times of Minocqua $30,278 for wrongly withholding names of state employees in 2005, the Journal Sentinel reported. The money covers the newspapers' costs of lawsuits. The state unsuccessfully argued that it couldn't release names because of labor agreements with its union employees. The state (and thereby taxpayers) might pay more. The Supreme Cour ruling sent the case back to circuit court to detemine if the state has to pay the papers' legal bills during appeals from the unions. The records probably won't be released until then. A Dane County Circuit judge has ruled that the county will have to pay in an open records lawsuit brought by the Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin State Journal, WTMJ-TV and WISC-TV.

The state paid two newspapers more than $81,500 this week after improperly refusing to release the names of state employees.

The payments - which could climb higher because they don't include appeal costs - came as the Capital Times of Madison sued the state for delaying the release of public records related to judicial appointments.

An attorney representing the Capital Times said it seemed as if Gov. Jim Doyle's office was deliberately slow in providing the records, in hopes they would lose their news value. Meanwhile, a spokesman for Doyle suggested the Capital Times was trying to "pose as open records champions and cost the taxpayers some money over it."

More here.

Fla. city installs city open-records kiosk

The City of Alachua in Florida installed a kiosk at City Hall that allows residents to search for public records without having to file a request, Alachua Today reported. The computer's search engine contains thousands of public records, including e-mails, ordinances, etc. However, the system is limited in that some records haven't been uploaded or haven't been converted into a format that is readable by the search engine. Michael Canney, a resident, said all the city's records aren't on the kiosk, including the city manager's e-mails. “To get certain public records, you have to jump through a lot of hoops and pay large amounts of money,” he said.

The City of Alachua recently installed a kiosk at City Hall for residents to get public records without having to request them from the city clerk.

Alan Henderson, deputy city clerk, said the search engine at the kiosk will eventually give Alachua residents access to ordinances, resolutions and anything considered a city public record.

The engine contains thousands of documents, but the system is limited as city officials continue to reformat and add more records.

More here.