N.C. ethics reform law signed, opening state workers' records

from newsobserver.com:

With two suspensions for inappropriate contact with a student, Jessica Wishnask quietly left the New Hanover school district two years ago to go work for another. She did not have to disclose her misconduct, and her prior employer did not report the suspensions.

Her new employer, Pitt County schools, did not find out about them until months later, when Wishnask got caught having sex with the same student and was sent to prison.

North Carolina's personnel law has helped hide suspensions such as those served by Wishnask for more than three decades. But that will change Oct. 1, thanks to a series of reforms Gov. Bev Perdue signed into law Monday that make public the suspensions and demotions of state and local employees.

Read more here.

Wisconsin Decides Whether Personal Emails Are Public Records

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear a case in November that decides whether personal emails of public employees are subject to the state's open records laws. The case stems from the request of a private citizen who wanted to know if public school teachers were violating school policy by using work email to discuss school board elections. When asked for email messages "from the computer [the teachers] use[d] during their school work day," teachers objected to providing emails of a purely personal nature. The Court must decide whether the public interest in disclosure trumps the privacy and "reputational" rights of Wisconsin citizens.

More here.

Idaho organization launches salary database

The Idaho Freedom Foundation created a database on OurIdaho.com in which people can search for the names and salaries of government employees, KTVB.com reported. The IFF obtained the data via FOIA requests, and its database contains nearly 40,000 employees.

Want to know how much money your child's teacher makes? How about the police officer who pulled you over last night?

Now you can.

A group that bills itself as a think tank dedicated to limited government has launched a salary database, that allows anyone to look up the names and pay rates for a range of government employees.

More here.

Transparency portal proposed but unpopular in Ill.

Illinois state Rep. Michael Tryon is urging the government "to create a Web site with a searchable database containing information about contracts, expenditures and employee salaries," The State (Ill.) Journal-Register reported. However, the legislative director for Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said some lower paid employees feel "sort of like their laundry's being aired." In other Illinois ethics news, the executive inspector general for agencies under the governor's office wants the law changed so that he and other inspectors won't have to wait for complaints to be filed in order to investigate anonymous tips.

Spurred by the Dec. 9 arrest of then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, officials inside and outside of state government are studying ways to battle government corruption.

GateHouse Media’s State Capitol Bureau is tracking their work and examining the issues that arise at public hearings of the legislature’s Joint Committee on Government Reform. The idea is to help readers understand attempts to fix state government and make it run in a way that better serves the public.

Last Tuesday, the legislative committee focused for a second time on the topic of “open government.”

More here.