Florida Baseball Lawsuit Challenges Secret Dealing Behind Economic Development Deal

The lawsuit stalling a $31 million renovation of Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota, Florida, alleges that local government officials violated Florida's Sunshine Law by failing to conduct business in the open.

The lawsuit is a signature case regarding taxpayer-funded economic development deals that are negotiated in secret.

Read more about the lawsuit here.

Newsweek: Obama opts against public disclosure

David Sobel, a lawyer who specializes in FOIA cases, told Newsweek that "nothing has changed" since Obama promised a new era of openness. Instead, the Bush administration's policies are being continued. FOIA experts say Obama's directive for federal agencies to presume disclosure of FOIA requests contained a loophole. The memo "said the new standard applies 'if practicable' for cases involving 'pending litigation.'" The recent controversy of over the denial of White House visitors logs falls into this category due to a pending Bush-era lawsuit for such records.

As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies. One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications." The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig's office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure. Since Obama pledged on his first day in office to usher in a "new era" of openness, "nothing has changed," says David -Sobel, a lawyer who litigates FOIA cases. "For a president who said he was going to bring unprecedented transparency to government, you would certainly expect more than the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies."

The hard line appears to be no accident. After Obama's much-publicized Jan. 21 "transparency" memo, administration lawyers crafted a key directive implementing the new policy that contained a major loophole, according to FOIA experts. The directive, signed by Attorney General Eric Holder, instructed federal agencies to adopt a "presumption" of disclosure for FOIA requests. This reversal of Bush policy was intended to restore a standard set by President Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno. But in a little-noticed passage, the Holder memo also said the new standard applies "if practicable" for cases involving "pending litigation." Dan Metcalfe, the former longtime chief of FOIA policy at Justice, says the passage and other "lawyerly hedges" means the Holder memo is now "astonishingly weaker" than the Reno policy. (The visitor-log request falls in this category because of a pending Bush-era lawsuit for such records.)

More here.

Utah bill to weaken FOI passes House

The Utah House supported a bill that would exempt records prepared for pending litigation as well as anticipated legal action from the public records act. Open-government advocates are concerned with how lawyers will define "anticipated legal action." The bill will now go to the Senate, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

A bill that would change Utah's public records act passed the House on a 43-27 vote Wednesday.

HB122 would allow some records to be classified as private or protected if prepared for pending litigation -- lawsuits already filed -- and anticipated legal action as well.

The measure has been opposed as a significant dilution of state open records law by a coalition of media organizations, which includes The Salt Lake Tribune.

More here.

The Litigation Exemption in Missouri Knows No Bounds...

This is a classic case of elastic exemptions...

Cape Girardeau County will not provide any material requested in two Sunshine Law requests from the Southeast Missourian because much of the material relates to possible lawsuits, Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle said Monday.

As part of the denial, Swingle declined also to release the names, rates of pay or reasons for hiring outside counsel for any litigation or providing legal advice. In declining that part of the request, Swingle wrote to the Southeast Missourian that it could jeopardize the attorneys' work product, information that is protected from disclosure by law.

The names and amounts the attorneys are paid will become public after their work is concluded, he said.

But a lawyer who advises the Missouri Press Association on the Missouri Open Meetings and Records Law, the official title of the Sunshine Law, said the names of lawyers under contract or on retainer are public records.

"That is open, absolutely," lawyer Jean Maneke said.

The Southeast Missourian made its first request for records April 25 as an article was being prepared about a closed meeting of the Cape Girardeau County Commission that dealt with attempts to discipline County Auditor David Ludwig. In the meeting, commissioners considered suspending Ludwig and, at one point, Ludwig was asked to resign. His attorney, Albert Lowes, has said the meeting dealt with Ludwig's accessing photos of actress Pamela Anderson on the Internet...

But wait! It gets better:

In an interview Monday morning, Swingle said he was advising the county to deny the requests because it related to a personnel matter. "Everything is related to litigation," Swingle said. "There is not a personnel matter that is not related to potential litigation."

Everything in the universe that is related to personnel is related to potential litigation. Wow...pretty much spells the end for scrutiny of public employees, eh?

More here.

A Bad Exemption In Maryland, Part II

A bill blocking access to some information requested under the Maryland Public Information Act will be referred to a subcommittee for amendments. The bill, introduced at the request of Baltimore City, would require anyone seeking information from a state or local government agency related to a pending lawsuit, to obtain a court order.

David Ralph, chief of the city Law Department's Litigation and Claims Division, testified Feb. 27 before the House Health and Government Operations Committee that the city was overwhelmed by requests from attorneys trying to circumvent trial-discovery laws by gaining access to further information under Maryland's Public Information Act. Ralph told legislators that the bill had "nothing to do with the limitation of public information. The only thing we care about is requests that were meant to be abusive."

The Public Information Act, which became law in 1970, governs the release of state documents and provides instances in which documents cannot be released, such as where the information could compromise trade secrets or medical information.

More here.

An Editorial on a Hideous Exemption Proposed in Maryland

Fine editorial in today's Washington Post:

PRACTICALLY every state in the nation has a law that eases access to public records and documents, a godsend for researchers, public advocacy groups and ordinary citizens, not to mention lawyers and journalists. Those laws, modeled on the federal Freedom of Information Act, have been mainstays of open and transparent government for several decades. That's why legislation pending in Maryland to cripple the state's Public Information Act is so singularly dimwitted.

Want state records on the Chesapeake Bay cleanup? Crime statistics? Information on the juvenile justice system? The legislation would block access to all of that if the request for information were "related to" a pending lawsuit -- a staggeringly broad and undefined exemption that would be almost impossible to administer. It would force document-seekers to petition a court to grant access to records that have been readily available for decades. No wonder Maryland judges, among many others, have opposed the legislation, warning that it may well be unconstitutional and would certainly result in a logjam of motions in court.