FOI AT Work: College Athletics and Academics

A nice piece of work from the Ann Arbor News has generated tremendous conversation in the hallways of athletic departments across the country, I'd guess:

Even as the University of Michigan men's basketball team played Iowa on a Saturday night in mid-January, most eyes in Crisler Arena seemed focused on Section 46, where new Michigan football coach Rich Rodriguez sat near quarterback Terrelle Pryor, the No. 1 high school player in America.

No one paid much attention to the grandfatherly figure who sat three rows behind Pryor.

John Hagen was, as he has been for decades, close to some of the most recognized athletes at Michigan. University records obtained by The News show that the veteran psychology professor has taught at least 294 independent studies from the fall of 2004 to the fall of 2007, and 85 percent of those courses, 251, were with athletes.

Michigan officials said Hagen taught additional independent studies in that period, however, they refused to disclose the number of athletes who were part of that group.

During most of that period since 2004, Hagen had a .25 teaching appointment, meaning one quarter of his time was supposed to be spent in the classroom.

Independent studies traditionally are one-on-one courses arranged between a professor and a student to cover subject matter that isn't available as a university course. In some cases, they involve small groups of students.

Since August 2006, university officials have twice examined whether Hagen's courses meet Michigan's academic standards. They call his independent studies an example of a nationally respected researcher working with undergraduates.

"This is the kind of faculty experience we aspire to provide for all of our students," said Terry McDonald, dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

When The News dug further, however, speaking to athletes and former athletic department employees as part of a seven-month investigation that included interviewing 87 people and reviewing more than 3,500 pages of internal documents, a different picture emerged...

More here.

An Important Story Often Overlooked: The Many Other Statutes That Hide Things

Here is a great story from my pal Kirsten Mitchell on an often overlooked issue: the many statutes that work like mini-exemptions in federal law. This is a story that ought to be replicated over and over in state after state!

Government information as wide-ranging as the names of people who grow watermelons or olives, information on tax returns, and the location of endangered plants and large caves is shielded from Americans under at least 140 provisions scattered throughout federal law.

Their use by federal departments to deny access to government information more than doubled between 1999 and 2006, according to data compiled from each department.

The provisions’ oft-buried fine print carves out exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act, a 42-year-old law that presumes public access to information from government agencies and lays out nine categories of information that the government may keep secret.

One of those nine is a catchall exemption which requires shielding government records that are specifically exempt from FOIA by federal law. Critics contend that the exemptions erode government transparency.

The exemptions “just have a tendency to chip away at the presumption that information is supposed to be public,” said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel of the National Security Archive, an independent nongovernmental research institute at George Washington University in Washington.

Dozens more catchall exemptions are being proposed in Congress, tucked into legislation for everything from bolstering the safety of the nation’s food supply to increasing security at wastewater treatment plants...

At least two dozen bills contain proposed special exemptions to FOIA. No one has an exact count, because they are difficult to track. Sometimes the proposals reference FOIA by citing “section 552 of title 5” of the U.S. Code. Other times, the language is more ambiguous, deeming that information shall be confidential or shall not be disclosed to the public.

Current proposals include exempting from FOIA a congressional advisory commission on world trade disputes, the identities of people who report illegal immigration and records related to railroad carrier plans to make the nation’s rails safer.

More here.

AP CEO Curley: "We Need More Sunshine"

An inspiring speech from Tom Curley, AP CEO and Sunshine Warrior, available here.

FEMA: Those Records Will Cost Ya...

From the Times-Picayune comes the latest PR victory from the folks who brought you the Hurrican Katrina cleanup...

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is charging a newspaper $209,990 for records documenting the agency's response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a price deemed "absurd" by one lawmaker.

The Advocate of Baton Rouge must pay that amount before FEMA will turn over copies of more than 2 million pages of documents relating to inspection and maintenance of government-issued trailers and mobile homes, the newspaper reported Tuesday.

FEMA also gave the newspaper 10 days to pay or said it would consider the request withdrawn.

Ah, yes...but the first 100 pages are free!

More here.

From Miami, A NIce New FOI Tool

For Sunshine Week, the Miami Herald has unveiled a cool new page dedicated to using public records.

Watchdog Data Sleuth -- developed by Assistant Managing Editor Manny Garcia and two of the newsroom's computer and online talents, Rob Barry and Stephanie Rosenblatt -- provides links to valuable public databases.

Also available on MiamiHerald.com today is a special page on public records and access, located here.

Over time, the Herald plans to build the Watchdog pages into a robust collection of links and databases that will serve as a resource in the yearround push for open government.

AP Sunshine Week Story: States Rolling Back Access

The AP's contribution to Sunshine Week is an excellent look at the national picture:

Some things your government doesn’t have to tell you about:

* The safety plan at your child’s school, if you live in Iowa.

* Medication errors at your grandparent’s nursing home in North Carolina.

* Disciplinary actions against Indiana state employees.

States have steadily limited the public’s access to government information since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a new Associated Press analysis of laws in all 50 states has found. Legislatures have passed more than 1,000 laws changing access to information, approving more than twice as many measures that restrict information as laws that open government books.

The horror of the attacks spurred a wholesale re-examination of information that could put the country in danger, and the state actions roughly mirror those on the federal level. Federal agencies responded by shutting down Web sites, pulling telephone directories and rethinking everything from dam blueprints to historical records.

In statehouse battles, the issue has pitted advocates of government openness — including journalists and civil liberties groups — against lawmakers and others who worry that public information could be misused, whether it’s by terrorists or by computer hackers hoping to use your credit cards. Security concerns typically won out.

The AP discovered a clear trend from the Sept. 11 attacks through legislative work that ended last year: States passed 616 laws that restricted access — to government records, databases, meetings and more — and 284 laws that loosened access. Another 123 laws had either a neutral or mixed effect, the AP found.

“What these open government laws do is break down that wall of government secrecy so that everybody knows what’s going on,” said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporter Committee for Freedom of the Press. “A democracy can only function if we have information. You can only have oversight of government if you have information.”

Associated Press reporters in every state, often with help from their local press associations, tracked the government access bills introduced since the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon were hit by hijacked planes.

In every state, reporters tallied bills that were proposed each year, and then examined the laws that passed. They assessed the impact of each new measure and rated it as loosening existing limits on public access to government information, restricting the limits, or neutral.

While fear of another terrorist attack drove many new proposals, it wasn’t the only motivator. Concerns about identity theft, medical privacy and the vulnerability of computerized records have sparked many pieces of legislation, too.

Lawmakers say they are recalibrating the balance between information that could be used against society and what society at large needs to know.

“Since Sept. 11, we’re looking at information like plans for our nuclear plants, the records of our bridges and transportation systems. All of the critical information that is out there that we don’t necessarily want to put in the hands of a terrorist,” said New York state Sen. Nick Spano, a Republican who had proposed tightening legislation soon after the attacks.

“It’s a very difficult balance between the public’s right to know and the public’s right to security,” Spano said. A different security measure ultimately became law, limiting access to information about infrastructure from airports to cellular phone systems. Last year, Spano authored a law that strengthened public access by setting a strict deadline for state agencies to respond to requests for information.

The give and take of a legislature usually forces changes to such bills — like a measure proposed last year in Oklahoma, where freshman state Sen. Charles Wyrick, a Democrat, sought to completely exempt the state’s new Department of Homeland Security from the Open Meetings Act and Open Records Act.

“I don’t know why all of a sudden the holy grail of security and safety is now closing records,” Mark Thomas, head of the Oklahoma Press Association, said after the bill was introduced. “It seems to me we would be more secure if we knew what was going on around us. ... Apparently there are those in government who want to close all these records and say, ‘We’ll keep you safe, trust us.’”

Negotiations brought a compromise. The law that passed allowed the department to keep communications between the agency and the federal government confidential, along with security plans for private businesses.

“We had to fight that out, and basically it ended up being an equal distribution of unhappiness,” Thomas said.

Still, the numerical data shows which side got more out of negotiations overall: The AP analysis of 1,023 new laws dealing with public access to government information found that more than 60 percent closed access. Just over a quarter created new avenues of access. The rest had a neutral effect, often through technical changes to existing laws.

Those laws emerged from just over 3,500 bills. Often, several legislators interested in a topic will each introduce a bill knowing that only one is likely to pass. In some states, the same legislation is introduced in both House and Senate chambers to speed action and build support.

Across more than four years, 36 states passed more restrictive laws than laws that loosened access; seven states passed more laws that eased barriers to access; seven states passed equal numbers. The analysis did not attempt to quantify the impact of larger, sweeping laws versus smaller modifications.

The AP analysis also did not study legislation prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, though observers say the changes have been obvious.

“What we see nationwide is states really backing away from their open access laws,” said Fred H. Cate, an Indiana University law professor who studies privacy and technology. Security threats are real — but some lawmakers are just “taking advantage of the public security tide,” he said.

More here.

Business is Good in Illinois

Requests to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office for assistance with the state's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Open Meetings Act (OMA) increased by 38 percent in 2007, according to a release from Madigan's office..

The statistics, released today as part of Madigan's third Public Access Counselor Annual Report, show that in 2007, the Attorney General's office received 1,366 requests from the public, government officials and members of the media for assistance in matters dealing with the Illinois FOIA and OMA. In 2006, the office received 988 requests.

Members of the public seeking access to government information continue to lead requests for assistance. Of the total number of written and telephone requests relating to the Freedom of Information Act and the Open Meetings Act, 939, or nearly 69 percent came from members of the public.

Madigan's Public Access team also saw a large increase in the number of requests for FOIA and OMA assistance from government officials. In 2007, the Public Access Counselor received 111 requests for FOIA assistance from government officials, up 178 percent from the 40 requests from government officials in 2006. Additionally, in 2007, the Public Access Counselor received 174 requests from government officials for assistance in addressing Open Meetings Act questions, up 262 percent from the 48 requests received in the previous year.

A Nice AP Summary of the State of E-Mail Access

housands of e-mails zip through state computers every day, but Rhode Islanders live in one of at least seven states where residents cannot see what their elected officials are reading and writing in cyberspace.

more stories like this

The state's open records law was amended in 1998 to define e-mail as a public record subject to disclosure just like paper documents. But lawmakers kept a massive loophole in the Access to Public Records Act that keeps private all the correspondence of elected officials, whether electronic or paper.

A review by The Associated Press found that e-mails for governors in at least six other states -- Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan and South Dakota -- are officially exempt from disclosure under state open records laws. But even in the remaining states, access to e-mail is generally limited.

Open government groups in Rhode Island have proposed amendments to the open records law requiring government officials to respond to information requests faster and increasing the penalties for agencies that refuse to comply. So far, no one has suggested loosening the provision blocking government e-mails and letters from public view -- a provision that still rankles some lawmakers and open government advocates.

More here.

From Atlanta, A Wonderful Idea....

Why not simply recap the year's stories made possible by FOI? A great idea, here.

An example:

GOVERNMENT SPENDING

Binge bucks: It's Georgia taxpayers' plastic, to be used by state employees to purchase goods for government. So why do many use it to buy porn, gifts, tans and trips?

A1 story, Dec. 23, 2007

By ANDREA JONES and MEGAN CLARKE

The story: A sample state audit of the use of purchasing cards, used by thousands of state employees to buy work-related items, showed poor oversight and a lack of control.

The state-issued Bank of America credit cards are used by 129 state agencies and dozens more local governments. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution analyzed more than 4 million transactions on state purchasing or "p-cards" and found a program that morphed from a simple way for workers to buy supplies into a $370 million spending spree.

How we got it: Under the Georgia Open Records Act, the AJC examined bank transactions on each state-issued purchasing card for the past three years. At the state's direction, Bank of America complied with the request because it is the custodian of the public records. The newspaper's analysis of p-card usage uncovered patterns of policy violations and hundreds of charges that raised questions. Employees used the cards to buy everything from tattoos to expensive trips. Employees spent $13 million in travel expenses, including $6 million for plane tickets, $240,000 in booking fees and $6.1 million in hotel and resort charges. They spent another $6 million at Amazon.com and $9.3 million at restaurants and caterers, to name a few.

The results: The statewide audit and newspaper articles prompted the governor to order all state agencies to review p-card use. Officials at the Department of Administrative Services, which oversees the program, said 1,200 cards have since been terminated, 1,000 more p-card holders had their transaction and/or credit limits reduced, and thousands of state staffers have now been trained. Lawmakers in both the House and Senate have introduced legislation that would further limit card usage.

The story and database are also available.

Text Messages, FOI (And a Dumb Quote from Moi)

Those supposedly private messages that public officials dash off on their government cellphones to friends and colleagues aren't necessarily private after all.

Courts, lawyers and states are increasingly treating these typed text messages as public documents subject to the same disclosure laws — including the federal Freedom of Information Act — that apply to e-mails and paper records.

"I don't care if it's delivered by carrier pigeon, it's a record," said Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition at the University of Missouri. "If you're using public time or your public office, you're creating public records every time you hit send."

A Texas judge agreed in December, ordering the city of Dallas to turn over e-mails written by some city officials as well as messages sent on handheld devices such as cellphones.

Journalists in Detroit are pressing for a similar ruling. Several media outlets, including the Gannett-owned Detroit Free Press, have sued the city for access to text messages Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick sent using his pager. Gannett also owns USA TODAY's parent company.

More here.

PA Paper Sues Over WVU MBA Records

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will sue West Virginia University for failing to comply with the state's open records law.

The newspaper alleges the university committed numerous violations in its response to requests for documents related to the school's decision last fall to retroactively award a master's of business administration degree to Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch, daughter of West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin.

"The university has engaged in a constant and consistent practice of delay, evasion and concealment" in violation of West Virginia's Freedom of Information Act, according to the newspaper's complaint...

In the complaint, the newspaper alleges that the university failed to respond in a timely manner to a series of Freedom of Information Act requests, withheld public records that are not privileged or otherwise exempt from disclosure, and concealed information by intentionally misapplying exemptions under the law...

The Post-Gazette made three requests for documents. The first was submitted Dec. 21, the day the newspaper published a story questioning the way the university went about granting the M.B.A. degree to Ms. Bresch nearly a decade after she left the program. WVU records had showed that Ms. Bresch, a high school classmate and former business associate of Mr. Garrison, had completed only about half of the credits the graduate program required...

Mr. Garrison's e-mail, cell phone and landline records were among the documents that were improperly withheld, according to the complaint. Some of his records, which the university said it did not possess, were included in files of other university officials whose records were turned over to the newspaper.

The only record of usage for Mr. Garrison's cell phone that the university produced showed the total charge for the month, without any accompanying detail, the suit states.

The university produced no landline records for Mr. Garrison and records of his appointment books were substantially redacted, according to the suit.

In its FOIA request made Jan. 18, the newspaper asked for copies of all records relating to the subject of whether Ms. Bresch fulfilled the requirements for an M.B.A. and to the decision to grant the degree.

A large portion of what was produced by the university were reprints of news stories, including those of the Post-Gazette.

In addition, "Vast swaths of the documents produced are blacked out on the ground that the material ... is exempted from disclosure by the 'internal deliberations' exemption" of the open records law, the complaint says.

More here.

A Secret Search? Arguments Always the Same...

The Temple Daily Telegram in Texas filed a Freedom of Information Act request Thursday with the Temple school district to disclose the names of five candidates selected to be interviewed for the vacant superintendent position.

The Temple school board intends to select a sole finalist and hire that person 21 days later, as opposed to multiple finalists. While the law allows for a sole finalist, Carroll Wilson, Telegram managing editor, believes the intention of the law is to allow the community sufficient time to vet all five candidates being interviewed for superintendent.

“The Telegram has asked for the names because the public has a right to know who is being interviewed to become superintendent of schools,” Wilson said Thursday. “State law recognizes the public right by requiring school boards to name their finalists. It’s disingenuous of the school board to argue that the five people they intend to interview aren’t finalists simply because they’re not using the word ‘finalists’ to describe them. Common sense says, of course, they’re finalists.

“Particularly given the problems the school board has had in the past in the selection of and the retention of superintendents, this process should have been as transparent as possible. And now is the time for the board to live up to the letter and the spirit of the law by being as open as possible.”

School board president Steve Wright said the board is following the law and the confidentiality of the process helps bring in higher quality candidates.

“We are choosing to go with a sole finalist because we have concluded that we are doing a closed application process, to ensure the quality of the applicants we receive and protect the anonymity of the applicants,” Wright said. “Circumstances are such that those people that are actively working in districts and enjoy that experience do not wish to expose that they are applying for other jobs to their home districts.”

More here.

NFOIC Keynote Address

A former USA Today reporter held in contempt for not revealing her sources for stories about the 2001 anthrax attacks will give the keynote address at the annual meeting May 9-10 of the National Freedom of Information Coalition.

Toni Locy had been ordered by a federal judge to pay fines of up to $5,000 for each day she refuses to reveal her confidential sources, but a federal appeals court earlier this week blocked the order.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia means Locy will not have to pay the fines or face further sanctions, including possibly time in jail, while her lawyers fight the contempt ruling.

An Oldie But a Goodie: Oldest Pending FOI Requests

Several federal agencies are running more than 15 years late on public record requests sent under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) when the first President Bush was still in office.

The Energy Department has the tardiest public record request, according to a review by The Hill of annual FOIA reports published by Cabinet-level agencies for the last fiscal year. It still has not answered one request from Dec. 6, 1991, although other departments are not far behind.

The Defense Department has a request pending from May 5, 1992, while the Treasury Department has not answered a request from March 8, 1993.

“Typically, when I file a request for information, I want it this week or this month, not 15 years from now,” said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. He said the decade-old requests are inconsistent with a law that is intended to get information to the public as quickly as possible.

Most FOIA requests are handled much more quickly by agencies, which in some cases are dealing with a significant workload. But the review shows some FOIA requests go unanswered for years, often because they are seen as touching on sensitive national security matters. A lack of resources and scant pressure from Congress in recent years are also seen as factors that have led to years-long FOIA waits.

More here.

Truth-in-Labeling FOIA Exemptions: A GREAT Idea

Most people don’t realize this, but there are hundreds of exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act buried in laws passed by Congress.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, introduced legislation today that would force lawmakers to “explicitly and clearly” state when they are creating such exemptions to FOIA in all future bills.

The legislation is intended to coincide with Sunshine Week, which starts on Sunday. For those in the dark, that is a week devoted to prying open the byzantine ways of Congress and the federal government.

The exemptions to FOIA addressed in the measure are known as (b)(3) statutory exemptions. They are typically tucked away in massive legislative proposals, making it difficult for requestors to determine whether access to information is subject to FOIA.Â

“This latest bill is an effort to further enhance government transparency and accountability,” Cornyn said. “Sunshine Week is an opportunity to highlight these important principles of our founding fathers; a truly self-governing society depends on an informed citizenry. Chairman Leahy and I will continue working together to ensure the public’s fundamental right to know what their government is doing.”

More here.

Want to Know What's In Your Tap Water? Sorry...

A fine example of secrecy madness from USA Today:

When water providers find pharmaceuticals in drinking water, they rarely tell the public. When researchers make the same discoveries, they usually don't identify the cities involved.

There are plenty of reasons offered for the secrecy: concerns about national security, fears of panic, a feeling that the public will not understand — even confidentiality agreements.

Much, much more here. Warning: if you like access to information, this will have you muttering at your computer screen...

CD

A Wonderful Compendium of FOI Info

The San Francisco Bay Guardian, long one of the nation's best FOI warriors, has produced its annual FOI issue, complete with a GREAT resource list.

It's all available here.

CD

Sunshine in Kansas: The State of Play

A nice column from our man in Kansas, Randy Brown:

Those of you interested in preserving our democratic society need to celebrate Sunshine Week, March 16-22.

Actually, "celebrate" is far too strong a word. "Observe with passion" is a better way to look at it, because there's not much to celebrate. The cause of open government is going backward -- in Kansas and across most of the United States.

The Sunflower State, along with 37 other states, recently flunked the sunshine test by the Better Government Association, a nonpartisan watchdog group that digs into problems and solutions about transparency and accountability in government. The study examined citizens' access to public information.

The ugly results show that "citizens have little or no recourse when faced with unlawful denial of access to their state's FOI laws," said Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition.

That should be no surprise in Kansas, where there has been a recent epidemic of open government problems involving local governments and issues large and small. A few examples:

• The Kansas Attorney General's Office has ruled that the Thomas County Commission twice violated the state's open meetings act by discussing a salary plan behind closed doors. In early February, Assistant Attorney General Michael Smith told commissioners they must accept a settlement agreement or face prosecution.

• Lawrence city commissioners were ordered in January to take a two-hour refresher course on compliance with the Kansas Open Meetings Act. Commissioners got into trouble when they went into a closed-door executive session to consider economic development incentives for a pharmaceutical company. After the violation became public, the company scuttled its plans to expand in Lawrence.

• The Topeka City Council ignited a firestorm with its "serial meeting" end run around the open meetings law to buy a backup police helicopter. Essentially, five members of the council met one-on-one in secret phone calls. The $850,000 copter purchase passed 5-4. Now Shawnee County District Attorney Robert Hecht has filed a lawsuit seeking to block the purchase. He says the most important issue is the council's secret run around the law.

There's plenty more bad news, but why? Why are so many local governments finding it so hard to operate meetings legally? Why is it often so difficult for members of the public to get access to public records?

More here.

Police reports bill moves in Mississippi

A bill that would make police incident reports available to the public cleared a Senate committee with little discussion this morning.

House Bill 474 now heads to the floor of the chamber for a vote before it can advance to Gov. Haley Barbour.

If enacted, basic law enforcement documents that give general information, such as the names of suspects and the date of their arrest, about a case would be considered an open record. Investigation reports that contain more detailed information would still be exempt.

Sen. Gray Tollison, D-Oxford, has said he is in favor of the legislation, provided it does not harm ongoing investigations. Tollison chairs the Senate Judiciary B Committee, which passed the bill this morning.

Open government and media advocates have lobbied lawmakers to pass the legislation for years.

A companion, Senate Bill 2728 passed out of a House committee Tuesday, but it was amended.

Oklahoma Court Plan Greatly Curtails Online Access

The Oklahoma Supreme Court has adopted rules cutting off public access to court records now available on the Internet.

When the rules go into effect on June 10, online access to court documents in the Supreme Court and district courts would be limited to court dockets only.

"The individual pleadings and other recorded documents filed of record in state court actions shall not be publicly displayed on the Internet," according to an order signed by Chief Justice James R. Winchester and four other justices.

The order, released on Tuesday, described the new rules as an effort to balance the rights of privacy of individuals and public access.

Besides eliminating Internet access, the order puts new restrictions on what information the public can access from legal documents filed with court clerks.

More here.

Rhode Island Discusses Reforms

E-mails from residents to their legislators are meant to be passed along and open to the public.

Legislative grants should be banned.

Interpreters for the deaf and other amenities for those with disabilities should be available at all City Council and School Committee meetings.

And three days — instead of the present 10-day time frame — is a reasonable amount of time to provide public documents when requested.

Those were just some of the opinions shared by four legislators during last night’s “State of Government in Rhode Island” forum at the Community College of Rhode Island’s Knight Campus. The event was sponsored by the Rhode Island Press Association and ACCESS/RI, a public information coalition.

More here.

New Mexico Next on FOI Reform?

Attorney General Gary King plans to ask the Legislature next year to update a New Mexico sunshine law providing access to public records.

One change proposed by King will require governmental bodies to accept e-mail requests for documents under the Inspection of Public Records Act. Currently, the law is unclear whether e-mail are the same as a written request for public records, according to the attorney general's office.

"So what we're going to be working on is a total revamp of that part of the law so that it meets 21st century standards," King said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

Last year, King's office issued an advisory opinion on the issue after New Mexico State University decided not to treat e-mail as a valid request for public records.

"I think that agencies, if they want to, can accept e-mail requests because you can print them out and turn them into a written request basically. But we just didn't think that the law required it," King said.

The attorney general's office and some other agencies accept e-mailed requests for public records.

More here.

In Missippi, Three Requests for Info Meet Sad Fate...

The Clarion-Ledger continues its excellent work on secrecy by asking for some info...

Despite a weeklong public awareness campaign by newspapers across the state last month, attempts to pierce Mississippi's official veil of secrecy continue to be a hit-and-miss endeavor.

hree recent efforts by The Clarion-Ledger to obtain public records from officials in Hinds and Madison counties and Jackson Public Schools met with resistance with the officials claiming unconventional exemptions and trying to put a costly price tag on the information without explaining why.

Jeanni Atkins, executive director of the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information, said Mississippi officials historically have been reluctant to share information with the public and the press. The Legislature is reviewing several measures to strengthen the state's sunshine laws, but changing attitudes will take longer, she said.

"This culture of secrecy is very ingrained. It's been very encouraging that some of the new, young legislators are very open to the idea of giving access to the public," she said.

As part of the series examining Mississippi's open-government practices, The Clarion-Ledger attempted to access a wide variety of documents to test official attitudes toward public-records laws. One of the thornier requests went to new Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith and state Attorney General Jim Hood for their files on Jackson Mayor Frank Melton.

Melton and his two police bodyguards were indicted in 2006 on a variety of charges related to his police-style tactics. Two separate trials ended with Melton pleading guilty to misdemeanor weapons charges and a jury verdict of not guilty on felony charges related to a raid on an alleged drug house.

Smith was an attorney on Melton's defense team in Melton's felony trial last March and was elected district attorney later in the year, defeating District Attorney Faye Peterson.

While Hood ordered his staff to release virtually all of the documents from his investigation, Smith denied the paper's request, citing a clause in state law exempting records pertaining to a criminal investigation. In a letter, Smith wrote that while the Melton case "has been characterized as a closed file," The Clarion-Ledger has written numerous stories regarding a federal grand jury investigation into the mayor's activities.

"Accordingly, we are bound by the statute to deny your request," he wrote.

More here.

An Interesting Study on Geospatial Data and the Threat of Open Info...

A favorite graduate student of mine passed this gem along...

"Mapping the Risks Assessing the Homeland Security Implications of Publicly Available
Geospatial Information" from the RAND Corp.

Highlights:

"Fewer than 6 percent of the 629 federal geospatial information datasets we examined appeared as though they could be useful to a potential attacker. Further, we found no publicly available federal geospatial datasets that we considered critical to meeting the attacker's information needs (i.e., those that the attacker could not perform the attack
without)....

Given the ready availability of alternative data sources, restricting public access to such geospatial information is unlikely to be a major impediment for attackers in gaining the needed information for identifying and locating their desired targets in the United States. The key exception to this general expectation is any type of geospatial information that reveals the location of vulnerabilities in the critical infrastructure that are not obvious or widely known, such as a particular choke point in a major power grid or telecommunications network."

The study can be found here.

Guv to AG: Those E-Mails Will Cost A Half-Million

The endlessly entertaining saga of the missing e-mails takes another turn:

Attorney General Jay Nixon said Saturday that Gov. Matt Blunt is demanding a "hugely exorbitant" amount of money for e-mail records sought by his appointed investigators.

Blunt has told Nixon's special investigators that they must pay nearly $541,000 to obtain governor's office e-mails from a backup system. Nixon suggested the charge was inappropriate.

"I think they should make these documents available publicly, and they should do so quickly," Nixon said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Last fall, Nixon appointed a three-person team to look into whether Blunt's office was violating the state's open-records law or document retention policies by deleting some e-mails.

That came after former Blunt legal counsel Scott Eckersley claimed he was fired for advising the governor's office it was violating the open-records law by not retaining some e-mails. Eckersley has sued Blunt for wrongful firing and defamation.

The Republican governor has said Eckersley was fired for justifiable reasons, including doing private work with state resources, and has dismissed the Democratic attorney general's appointed investigation as political.

Nixon is running for governor, though Blunt is not seeking re-election.

Nixon asserted Saturday that he has allowed the investigators to act independently and that he knows nothing about the details of their records requests to Blunt's office nor about the specific reasons why the governor's office has not turned over the requested e-mails.

More here.

West Va. FOI Request Shows Storm of Protest Over Guv Kid's MBA

Some alumni told West Virginia University administrators they believed the controversy over Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch's graduate degree cast a dark cloud over the school, according to documents released by WVU this week.

The documents, obtained by the Post-Gazette under the state's Freedom of Information Act, offer a glimpse into how some alumni and West Virginia citizens view the matter, but offer no new insights into how or why officials decided to award a Masters of Business Administration degree to Ms. Bresch in October, nearly a decade after she left the program.

"I am a member of the class of 2000 and am writing to you to express my embarrassment over the Heather Bresch story," one disgruntled alumnus wrote in a Dec. 30 e-mail to university President Michael Garrison. "Your handling of this situation tarnishes the name of West Virginia University and calls into question every degree it has awarded."

"I for one plan to sue," said another. "My degree isn't worth squat anymore. When the full extent of this gets out the reputation of WVU will be completely in the toilet."

The e-mails were sent in the wake of a Dec. 21 story by the Post-Gazette that raised questions about how the university went about granting the degree even though university records showed Ms. Bresch, daughter of West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, had completed only about half of the credits required.

More here.

A Novel Argument: We Deleted, So They're Exempt!

A judge wants a closer look at why the Harris County Sheriff's Office believes its mass deletion of 750,000 e-mails from employees' computer inboxes makes the correspondence exempt from the Texas Public Information Act.

The mass e-mail deletion — six months' worth — was ordered Jan. 9 but executed on Jan. 12, one day after television reporter Wayne Dolcefino of KTRK (Channel 13) requested e-mails from the Sheriff's Office.

Dolcefino received some e-mails from the Sheriff's Office but his station contends they are not sure if they got all of them because the order to delete messages more than 14 days old coincided with requests he had made, the station's attorney says.

"There is some coincidental issue," said John Edwards, attorney for KTRK.

The station obtained a temporary injunction against the Sheriff's Office to halt the deletions once KTRK learned of them and requested copies of the e-mails deleted from employees' inboxes, which occurred between Jan. 12 and Jan. 19.

More here.

A Novel Argument: We Deleted, So They're Exempt!

A judge wants a closer look at why the Harris County Sheriff's Office believes its mass deletion of 750,000 e-mails from employees' computer inboxes makes the correspondence exempt from the Texas Public Information Act.

The mass e-mail deletion — six months' worth — was ordered Jan. 9 but executed on Jan. 12, one day after television reporter Wayne Dolcefino of KTRK (Channel 13) requested e-mails from the Sheriff's Office.

Dolcefino received some e-mails from the Sheriff's Office but his station contends they are not sure if they got all of them because the order to delete messages more than 14 days old coincided with requests he had made, the station's attorney says.

"There is some coincidental issue," said John Edwards, attorney for KTRK.

The station obtained a temporary injunction against the Sheriff's Office to halt the deletions once KTRK learned of them and requested copies of the e-mails deleted from employees' inboxes, which occurred between Jan. 12 and Jan. 19.

More here.

University of Illinois Accused of Secrecy

SPRINGFIELD – The University of Illinois came under fire Thursday for its response to requests for public records.

State Rep. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, criticized the UI for what he sees as a pattern of "unresponsiveness" on Freedom of Information Act inquiries from students and journalists, on subjects ranging from utility costs to the retirement of Chief Illiniwek.

At a legislative budget hearing in Springfield, Rose said the UI has dragged out requests by denying them outright, demanding fees or calling them "unduly burdensome."

"Why can't we get these documents?" Rose asked UI President B. Joseph White.

White defended the university's commitment to openness and its record on FOIA requests, but also promised to do better.

"The general principle is, we do our business not only in the open but in the sunshine," he said.

Rose said in one case, UI student Paul Schmitt – elected last week as the new Urbana student trustee – was told his request for correspondence between "officers and agents" of the university and the NCAA was unduly burdensome because it didn't specify what an officer or agent was.

"At best that's a slap in the face to the kid who filed it. At worst you're trying not to disclose something," Rose said.

More here.

The Petition Clause Takes a Beating in Missouri

The people elected to make laws in Missouri are trying to make it more difficult for voters to make laws themselves.

The General Assembly’s quest to restrict ballot initiatives could cause a clash between the people’s constitutional rights and the legislature’s constitutional powers.

In addition to general free speech rights, the Missouri Constitution specifically states that people have the right to enact laws and constitutional amendments through initiatives, independent of the General Assembly.

Yet the legislature also has the power to prescribe the details of how that is done.

So on Feb. 28, the House voted 107-41 to pass legislation that would impose several new requirements on the people who gather petition signatures. The bill, H.B. 1763, would:

• Require petition circulators to be Missouri residents and U.S. citizens.
• Prohibit them from being paid based on the number of signatures they gather.
• Bar them from simultaneously collecting signatures for more than one initiative.
• Require them to register with the secretary of state’s office before they start collecting signatures rather than before the deadline to turn them in, as is currently the case.

The legislation now heads to the Senate, where a similar proposal already is pending on this week’s debate calendar.

More here.

Iowa Reforms Clear Hurdle

Iowa’s sunshine laws would have some new cops on the beat under a proposal recommended Wednesday by a Senate committee.

The 50-page bill is in response to years of complaints from citizens, media organizations and government agencies about a lack of openness in government. The biggest change would be the creation of a new office to investigate alleged violations.

“We’re trying to shine the light even brighter on government,” said Sen. Mike Connolly, D-Dubuque, the bill’s lead sponsor.

The Senate State Government Committee recommended the bill on a voice vote, with no opposition, though two Republicans chose not to vote.

The measure is now eligible for debate on the Senate floor.

The following are some of the notable parts of the plan:

* A new group, the Iowa Public Information Board would be created to enforce the law. The bill doesn’t include the board’s budget, but sponsors said they expect the board to cost up to $1 million per year to run. Under current law, the Attorney General’s Office is one of several agencies that enforce the open meetings and open records laws.

* Violations of the law would be subject to a civil penalty, as opposed to a criminal one. The minimum fine would rise from $100 to $1,000, and the maximum would rise from $1,000 to $2,500.

* Government boards that are conducting a job search would need to disclose the names of candidates once the search is narrowed to five or fewer candidates. This is in response to concerns about openness in the recent University of Iowa president’s search.

* Out-of-court settlements involving a government board would be public record.

More here.

Rhode Island FOI Reforms Unveiled...

Proponents of public records access, including the media and the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, came out in support last night of a bill that would strengthen the state’s Open Records Law.

Those in favor of the amendments say they would help make Rhode Island government more transparent and protect the public’s right to know.

Critics meanwhile worry that the changes would drain staff resources and increase costs at a time when public agencies are already strained.

Proponents of public records access, including the media and the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, came out in support last night of a bill that would strengthen the state’s Open Records Law.

Those in favor of the amendments say they would help make Rhode Island government more transparent and protect the public’s right to know.

The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Edith H. Ajello, D-Providence, and presented yesterday to the House Judiciary Committee, calls for limiting the amount of time public bodies have to respond to open records requests from the current 10 days, to 3 days, with some exceptions.

Police departments would have just 24 hours to respond to provide arrest reports, including the narratives that explain the specific circumstances surrounding the arrests. While organizations facing unduly large or complicated budget requests would have 20 days to answer requests (currently they have 30 days).

Public bodies that fail to comply with the law would see fines increased from the current $1,000 to $15,000.

The second major change in the law calls for all state agencies to train any of their officers and employees authorized to grant or deny records and to annually certify in writing that it has done so.

More here.

You've Got (Incendiary) Mail!

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services' public affairs director, who was fired Tuesday, said that Gov. Mike Easley's press office instructed the chief spokesmen for executive branch agencies to destroy e-mail correspondence to his office.

"The governor's office, press office, to bypass the public records laws, they ask the second you e-mail them anything, to kill it, then kill it again out of your trash so it doesn't exist," said Debbie Crane. "That's what they tell all the public affairs people, that they don't want to create any public records."

Seth Effron, a spokesman for Easley, denied Crane's allegation.

"This office has never told anybody to destroy any public record," Effron said. He also said that Crane had been "dishonest, untruthful and insubordinate," and had hindered reporters from getting information from the department. He declined to elaborate.

Crane, a public information officer for 18 years, was fired amid the fallout from a News & Observer investigation of the state's mental-health system. Her contention, if true, shows a violation of the state's public records law, said Amanda Martin, an attorney for the N.C. Press Association and The News & Observer.

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.

At Least Five FOI Bills In Georgia...

The public's right to government records could shrink or expand depending on the outcome of five bills vying for lawmakers' approval this session.

While one measure would allow judges to keep the public from seeing sexually explicit evidence in criminal trials (a response to a notorious teen sex case), another would raise the bar legislators must clear to keep records from the public eye.

Just two weeks ago, contractors' bids and contracts with development authorities -- documents the public has a right to view -- seemed headed toward secrecy under House Bill 1200, sponsored by Rep. Wendell Willard, R-Sandy Springs. However, the House State Planning & Community Affairs Committee tabled the bill and a motion to revive it failed this week....

Making it harder to create an exemption is at the heart of Senate Resolution 970, which resides in the hands of the Senate Ethics Committee.

S.R. 970 proposes a constitutional amendment that would require any new exemption to the Open Record Act to get a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate, a so-called supermajority that now is reserved for proposed constitutional amendments...

More here.

Oregon University Contracts With Sports Marketers: A Trade Secret?

Oregon and Oregon State's multimillion-dollar sports marketing contracts are trade secrets and can be hidden from public view, Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers said this week.

In a nine-page opinion released late Monday, Myers' office upheld both universities' contention that they could keep the amounts of their sports broadcast and marketing rights contracts confidential under the state public records law. The confidentiality helps them maintain a business advantage over marketing contractors and other schools, the opinion said.

"The state has an economic interest in maximizing payments made to its universities pursuant to sports marketing contracts," Deputy Attorney General Peter Shepherd wrote. "In sum, would-be contractors who know exactly what the UO or OSU agreed to accept in the past might offer less than they otherwise would have offered."

Shepherd said that because private marketing firms do business with scores of other universities, "the UO's negotiators will be at a disadvantage if they cannot offer would-be contractors protection for 'trade secrets.' "

Earlier this month, The Oregonian petitioned Myers after both schools released past and present sports media marketing contracts but blacked out the guaranteed annual amounts each receives, along with other financial benefits. Each cited an exemption under the Oregon Public Records Law that keeps trade secrets confidential.

"The Oregonian's role is to get as much information as possible in front of the public," said Sandy Rowe, editor of The Oregonian. "The university's refusal to release the information is surprising and disheartening since it has selectively released some information, and other colleges seem willing to share this information with the public."

Arizona, Arizona State, Washington, Washington State and California released similar contracts to The Oregonian without blacking out their amounts. Many other college's sports marketing contracts have been reported publicly.

More here.

A Great FOI Idea From Across the Pond...

A charity is testing a website which automates the submitting, tracking, and publishing requests made under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act.

MySociety, which runs sites including elected representative service TheyWorkForYou.com and mass pledge system PledgeBank.com, has built a list of FoI contacts at central government departments and is creating one for local authorities.

A request made through the new site is sent to the appropriate state sector contact from a unique email address, allowing all responses to be tracked and published on the site. "Everything the department sends to that address is tacked on," mySociety director Tom Steinberg said. "The whole communication is all online."

Steinberg said so far only one organisation – Parliament – has refused to reply to a request made through the system: "They said, we can't send you this information as you are going to put it on the internet."

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.

South Dakota House Passes Reform Bill

A bill that would set up an appeals process to resolve disputes over access to government records in South Dakota has been approved 68-1 by the state House.

If an agency denies a request for records, the person seeking those records could have the dispute reviewed by the state Office of Hearing Examiners.

The office could hold a hearing before determining if records should be released or remain closed to the public.

SB186 was approved earlier by the state Senate but must be returned to see if it agrees with some changes made by the House.

New Exemption for Animal Researchers in Utah

The Utah House of Representatives passed a bill to conceal the names, personal addresses and phone numbers of U animal researchers.

The bill, which passed unanimously Feb. 22 and the Senate president signed on Monday, would modify the Government Records Access and Management Act to classify personal information of researchers who do medical or scientific research on animals at Utah colleges and universities as protected documents. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. must now sign the bill for it to become law.

Sen. Greg Bell, R-Fruit Heights, sponsored the bill in response to animal rights protesters from the group Utah Primate Freedom who, he said, had been harassing U researchers and vandalizing their homes.

"The public has the right to understand what research is going on...but they don't need to know specific information of workers," Bell told The Daily Utah Chronicle earlier this month. "Basic human dignity and decency requires that we have people in good faith pursuing legitimate research, but we shouldn't be harassing people just because we disagree with them. But that hasn't worked, so we have to resort to legal means."

Utah Primate Freedom activist Harold Rose said the legislation won't have any effect on the group's campaign to stop animal research.

"It's more of a symbolic gesture on their part," Rose said. "Unless they completely cease doing research, we're going to hear about it."

Rose said none of the names or addresses of researchers his organization has used to target researchers' homes were found through GRAMA requests or the Freedom of Information Act, because the U denied all of their requests. The group petitioned the U for the identities, positions and salaries of researchers last year, but the U denied the request, a decision the Utah State Records Committee upheld. On one occasion, Utah Primate Freedom submitted a request for the types and number of animals being used for research at the U, which was also denied.

More here.

West Virginia Officials Try o Yank Tax Maps Off Website?

Kanawha County (W.Va.) tax officials have put off an injunction against a Harrison County software designer to see if the state Supreme Court weighs in on a controversial tax map issue.

Seneca Technologies, which designs software for the oil and gas industry and others, went to court last year under the state Freedom of Information Act to obtain electronic versions of all county tax maps.

Counties charge $8 a page for copies of their tax maps. Officials for Seneca Technologies filed a FOIA request with the state tax department for the maps, but were told it would cost more than $167,000 for all 20,936 maps in the state.

Company executives thought the cost was too high. Kanawha Circuit Judge Irene Berger agreed, ruling that there's nothing in state law setting the price of electronic versions of the tax maps. State law dictates that government bodies can charge "reasonable" costs to reproduce electronic information.

Seneca executives got electronic copies of the tax maps from the state for a fee of $20, then posted the maps on their Web site, making them available for free.

"The applications for [this information] are tremendous," said Patrick Lough a software engineer for Seneca Technologies.

Posting the tax maps online can save countless trips to county courthouses looking up map information, Lough said.

"Everyone who has to do mineral extraction has to do map work at the courthouse," he said. While online maps would be particularly useful to oil and gas executives, the information would also be useful to others, Lough said.

Company lawyers argue members of the public can use the information contained in the maps to cross-check property tax information, hikers can use the information to make sure they aren't trespassing on private property, colleges and universities can use the information for research projects and emergency responders can use the information to see who owns certain pieces of property.

Lough also said Seneca Technologies plans to link the tax map information with other databases and sell the information to potential clients.

But Kanawha County Assessor Phyllis Gatson fears Seneca Technologies is hijacking the maps for personal gain.

More here.

A Brave Legislative Act in Utah: Admitting Error

Don't vote for my bill.

It's a phrase rarely heard at the Utah Legislature, but that didn't stop Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, during a committee meeting Friday.

At the tail end of a long debate on SB260, Buttars asked his colleagues to vote against his bill that would make private all formal charges and disciplinary actions against a peace officer. Committee members listened and killed the bill in the Senate Government Operations and Political Subdivisions Committee on Friday.

"This isn't what I thought it was," Buttars said. "I really think this is not a good bill, and if you're going to vote on it, I would vote 'no' at this time."

Buttars said he wanted the bill to conceal disciplinary actions if the officer were exonerated. But the bill didn't do that at all. It provided blanket protections for records detailing the misdeeds of police officers.

The majority of Utahns are against such blanket protections, according to a new Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll. In fact, 62 percent of those polled said disciplinary records should be in the public eye.

Just 31 percent said the records should be private. The Dan Jones & Associates poll was conducted Feb. 19-21 and has a margin of error, plus or minus, of 5 percent.

More here.

South Dakota Reform Fails...

A House committee Wednesday killed an open-records bill that would require the government to justify denying public access to documents.

The measure raises too many questions about how records dealing with personal information, public safety or other sensitive issues would be treated, some opponents said.

"I think they need to go back to the task force and work on a bill that they can agree on there, then bring it back," said Rep. Shantel Krebs, R-Sioux Falls, after the House's State Affairs Committee killed the bill 7-6.

Sen. Nancy Turbak Berry, D-Watertown, sponsored the bill. She said after the meeting that although the vote was close, she doubted she'd try to revive it this session.

"I will keep working on it and hammering at it," she said. "It isn't finished by any means."

She said opposition from Gov. Mike Rounds' office helped kill the bill.

"Whatever we'd try to change at this point would be nitpicked word by word," Turbak Berry said.

She served on a task force organized by Attorney General Larry Long that reviewed the status of government records in South Dakota. State law generally says records required by law to be kept are open. Numerous specific laws close different individual records or classes of records. But Long's review found that a vast number of records fall somewhere between those two areas. It also found that government officials have wide discretion to make decisions on whether to open or close records.

More here.

In Arizona, A Move Toward Some Openness in Child Protective Services...

PHOENIX — A House panel voted Thursday to give the public more access to Child Protective Services records when a child is killed or seriously injured.

But some — including a Tucson legislator — want more.

HB 2765 requires the Department of Public Safety to provide information on request about any fatality or near fatality if it is "reasonably suspected" the assailant was a parent or guardian.

The bill sets up a series of procedures the agency would follow, sets some deadlines and also gives county prosecutors a chance to object if they believe the release would harm efforts to complete an investigation.

The legislation was approved by the House Committee on Human Services on a 7-1 vote.

Rep. Pete Hershberger, R-Tucson, who is sponsoring the measure crafted by CPS attorneys, said it is designed to balance the public's right to know with both the needs of county attorneys to successfully prosecute assailants as well as the restrictions of federal law that shield certain personal information from disclosure.

"I think there's real movement here," he said.

But Rep. Jonathan Paton, R-Tucson, said the procedures in Hershberger's bill likely would delay the release of any information.

The legislation is in direct response to the deaths last year of Brandon Williams and Ariana and Tyler Payne in Tucson. It took a lawsuit by the Arizona Daily Star to force CPS to surrender the documents under the state's Public Records Law.

John Moody who represents the Arizona Newspapers Association said Hershberger's bill removes CPS documents from being subject to the Public Records Law and sets up an entirely separate procedure, one he believes is more cumbersome.

Attorney David Bodney, who represents The Arizona Republic, pointed out the Public Records Law requires documents to be surrendered "promptly." He said while there is no specific time frame, that is bound to be quicker than the procedures in Hershberger's bill.

That bill says that within seven days of a request, CPS must inform the county attorney or the law-enforcement agency reviewing the matter of the intent to release information. That agency then has seven days to decide whether it wants to review the materials before they go out.

Then CPS has another 30 days to gather the information.

What happens next depends on whether police or prosecutors want to redact certain information or object to the records going out, which lands the process in court.

Bodney called that "a bureaucratic maze of deadlines."

More here.

A "Borderline Preposterous" Denial

Jacksonville State University has refused a newspaper’s request for athletic-department records less than a year after the state attorney general’s office said a request for copies of coaches’ contracts should be granted.

The Anniston Star has been seeking the results of the school’s athletic department drug-testing program since April 2007 to review its effectiveness. But the university has denied the request each time, saying it would compromise the identity of student-athletes who tested positive.

Birmingham attorney Gilbert Johnston, who handles public-records law cases, said JSU’s assertion is “borderline preposterous.”

University President William Meehan referred all questions on the issue to the school’s attorney, Randy Woodrow of Anniston. He has said disclosure of the records could be a violation of federal laws governing medical privacy.

The Star has amended its requests to more general terms to ensure individuals could not be identified, but the school says the sample size would still make it easy to identify individual athletes.

“We understand and appreciate the university’s need to protect medical privacy of these student-athletes,” Star Editor Bob Davis said in a Feb. 20 story. “We believe the public has a right to know about drug testing conducted by the athletic department of a public university using public funds.”

More here.

FOI bills in Mississippi advance...

A handful of bills that would lift the veil of secrecy from state and local government cleared the first legislative hurdle Tuesday.

Among the survivors is a measure that would require law enforcement agencies to make police incident reports available to the public when an investigation is complete, according to the Associated Press.

House and Senate committees cleared companion bills addressing the police incident reports.

The bills are among several bills designed to improve government openness being supported by the Mississippi Freedom of Information Center and the Mississippi Press Association. Several state news organizations, including the Hattiesburg American, recently published an eight-day series on Mississippi's sunshine laws.

Also clearing a House committee was a bill that gives the state Ethics Commission the authority to enforce the sunshine laws.

A bill introduced by Rep. Toby Barker, R-Hattiesburg, that would give the public access to details about state contracts and subcontracts via the Internet was approved by the House Appropriations Committee.

Barker, a freshman, said the bill cleared the committee without changes.

"There were questions about the cost of the Web site, but we found out that most recently Missouri and Kansas have implemented their Web sites for no cost," he said.

He said the federal government has free software for states to set up Web sites.

Barker said the bill, which would establish the Mississippi Taxpayer Transparency Act, still has a long way to go.

More here.

Water, Water Everywhere...Secret Water Pact Makes the Papers

Look for more of this sort of thing as water becomes more precious:

Officials from Alabama, Florida and Georgia signed a confidentiality agreement in January that includes two private utilities and prohibits the parties from disclosing to the public details of the ongoing negotiations over water rights in the region.

A Florida seafood industry group says the secrecy deal, which also includes the federal government, is illegal and is asking the state's open government commission to throw it out.

"It just fuels suspicion on the part of people down here whose livelihoods depend on this," Kevin Begos, executive director of the Franklin County Oyster & Seafood Task Force, said Tuesday. "We just feel that we have no real say in what's going on and we're not getting any solid information about what's being discussed."

The task force obtained a copy of the agreement through an open records request after state and federal officials provided few details on the status of negotiations last week.

Sarah Williams, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, said the agreement was intended to allow for open negotiations even as the states face off in a series of related court battles.

"The confidentiality agreement was there to ensure we can have open and fair discussions without compromising ongoing litigation," she said. "When we have more details, when we have a proposal, it will be put forth to the public."

But it seems the secrecy doesn't meet with everyone's approval:

Read more here.

A Tough Look at the Utah Police Files Exemption

Amen, Amen:

Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank and police union President Tom Gallegos are tight.

Which explains how Gallegos can still be on the job after harassing two female co-workers - "I probably should not be alone in a room with you when you're on your knees," he told one - and sending porn from his city computer (a felony). Instead of firing Gallegos, Burbank has filled his personnel file with letters of reprimand.

Gallegos probably would rather not have the dirty details of his on-the-job sexual harassment training revealed. But even Chief Burbank couldn't help him.

West Jordan Republican Sen. Chris Buttars can. He's sponsoring legislation that would allow cops like Gallegos - with the complicity of police chiefs like Burbank - to keep their disciplinary records secret. Under the bill, which is backed by the Utah Chiefs of Police Association, officers would have to consent to release information about their bad acts.

Buttars' bill is part of lawmakers' annual chipping away at Utah's public records law. Rep. Mel Brown, R-Coalville, is sponsoring legislation that would allow government agencies to classify the minutes of meetings as "protected drafts." Orem Republican Sen. Margaret Dayton has carved out a special exemption allowing lawmakers to get "private, controlled or protected" information.

More here.

Private College Records May Well Be Public, Too...

Like cops in any major city, campus police officers at many private universities carry guns and can arrest people on the spot. But since they don't work for taxpayers, the public can't always delve into the records of what they do and where they do it.

But that may be changing.

At Yale University in New Haven, Conn., an attorney is successfully prying open personnel records of the campus police department. In Georgia, 2006 legislation opened up police records at private universities to public view. In Massachusetts, the legislature is considering a similar bill.

Crime records at private universities are "the last major issue in terms of getting access to crime information," says S. Daniel Carter, senior vice president of Security on Campus, Inc., in King of Prussia, Pa.

For their part, private universities say they are not public agencies and must act to protect the privacy of students and staff. But critics argue that public relations play at least as big a role. "For PR purposes, colleges want to perpetuate the impression that their campuses are crime-free enclaves," says Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va., which supports college newspapers. "Honestly, no one believes that. Everyone believes that a campus with 20,000 or 30,000 young people on it is going to have some crime. It's not even an effective charade."

More here.

A Security Exemption Looms in Virginia

I like the lead of this story:

In the basement of a building between an IHOP and a car dealership sits the nexus of Virginia’s fight against terror.

There, people who need special clearances pass through layer after layer of security on their way to a conference room so secure no one can have a cell phone or a piece of electronic equipment inside. The door locks alone cost $4,000 apiece.

Most people know little about the Virginia Fusion Center. And if a bill quietly wending through the General Assembly becomes law, they’ll know even less.

The bill, coincidentally named HB1007, would exempt the center’s investigative and intelligence documentation from the state Freedom of Information Act and would shield its employees from subpoenas in civil lawsuits concerning criminal intelligence information or terrorism investigations.

Open government watchdogs decried the bill. They said it goes too far in giving additional furtive powers to a quasi-secret agency. They point to the measure as another cramp to personal freedoms in a post-Sept. 11, 2001, era....

The bill passed the House 98-1, and a Senate panel could hear it this week. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine supports the measure, according to a spokesman.

The Virginia Press Association and the Virginia Coalition for Open Government have lobbied against the bill. The Virginian-Pilot is a member of the press association and is a founding partner of the Coalition for Open Government....

Ginger Stanley, executive director of the Virginia Press Association, calls HB1007 “Big Brother at work.”

Stanley said it is understandable to restrict information about terror investigations but that blocking public access to records related to “criminal intelligence” – as the bill reads – is overbroad and could apply to anything.

That would “allow them to keep private every piece of information,” she said. “They need protection to a point, but they take it way beyond that.”

More here.

Bad Bill Department: Secret Police Records?

The state's largest police department and Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker are backing a controversial bill that would severely limit public access to the disciplinary records of police officers.

Police Chief Chris Burbank this week cast the effort as a way to put city cops on par with Salt Lake County officers who enjoy greater protection of disciplinary records. In what could be a litmus test for the new mayor on records-access issues, Becker said he is taking the chief's advice.

"On the advice of our police chief, we support it," said Helen Langan, a spokeswoman for Becker. "It's a sensible thing to do."

SB260, sponsored by Sen. Chris Buttars, would give police throughout the state the same exemption carved out for county officers: disciplinary charges against them would not be made public unless the officer appeals the sanction or agrees to open the records.

Public watchdog groups opposing the bill, now before a Senate committee, say it is a way to cloak information that should be available to taxpayers who support police departments.

"Just because the county officers have this secret police system doesn't mean we want to have a statewide police system of secrecy," said attorney Michael O'Brien, who represents the Utah Media Coalition, of which The Salt Lake Tribune is a member.

More here.

Glory, Glory! PA Guv Signs New FOI Law

Gov. Ed Rendell ended Pennsylvania's distinction of having one of the nation's weakest open-records laws Thursday by signing into law a bill that will open a broader array of government documents to public inspection.

The measure makes sweeping changes to the state's Right-to-Know Law, which was enacted in 1957. It took lawmakers 13 months to agree on a version to send to the governor as they argued over how much information to conceal from average citizens and journalists.

"Is it a perfect bill? No. Is it a good bill? Absolutely. Is it a step on the road to reform? Without a doubt," said Rendell, who signed the bill at a Capitol news conference, surrounded by Democratic and Republican legislators.

The new law, which takes effect in January, will force agencies to disclose all records beyond a list of exceptions, rather than the old law's narrow list of public records available.

Agencies also will be required to justify any decisions to keep records secret. The old law put the legal burden on citizens to prove why a record must be disclosed.

Revising the law became a cornerstone of the Legislature's reform agenda after two dozen lawmakers were voted out in the wake of the 2005 pay raise debacle. The raise, which the General Assembly passed hastily in the middle of one summer night, was later repealed.

"It's something I think that will pay dividends for years to come in the interaction between citizens and their government, and I think further affirms the commitment we've made ... to an open and transparent process, which would necessarily help citizens regain confidence in their government," said Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, the bill's prime sponsor.

Congrats, Pennsylvanians!

Read more here.

Great New FOI Series in Mississippi

The business of government is a costly enterprise, and its stockholders, the people of Mississippi, must feed the treasury year after year to keep the state, counties, towns and cities afloat.

Last year, Mississippi taxpayers ponied up billions to complete their part of the social contract that keeps democracy of, for, and by the people - and the people's pocketbook - alive.

But, in what might be considered a not-so-kind twist to the partnership of people and politicians, those who pass the laws have constantly chosen to limit the information that is shared with the very people who elect them and fund their activities.

At every turn, you will discover where state lawmakers have tightened the flow of information about government that the electorate needs to make informed decisions.

Elected officials too often subvert the public's right to important information when they acquire the paternalistic - even arrogant - notion that they know what is best for us. They continually take steps such as closed-door meetings and create exemptions to state laws intended to keep government open.

Who is protected by acts cloaked in secrecy? An inquiring public shut off from its own business or public officials who want to avoid responsibility for their actions?

News organizations across Mississippi have produced an eight-day series of reports about secrecy in government. These articles represent an extraordinary effort by reporters and editors who are concerned that the lack of transparency in Mississippi is harmful to the state's well-being.

Read it all here.

Detroit Mayor's Text Messages: Part of Secret Deal

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick personally approved a cover-up of explosive text messages between him and his top aide Christine Beatty as part of an $8.4-million trial settlement last year, according to documents the city agreed Thursday to make public.

As part of the deal, the records show, the text messages were stashed temporarily in a safe deposit box across from City Hall. Each side got a key, but agreed not to open the box outside the presence of the other. Kilpatrick was to take possession of the messages only after the payout was made to the three former police officers who had sued.

City officials had denied the existence of secret documents since October, when the Free Press first requested them under Michigan's Freedom of Information Act. The paper wanted to know more about why Kilpatrick suddenly agreed to settle the lawsuits brought by the cops who claimed they were retaliated against because of their connections to an investigation of the mayor's security team -- a probe they said would have exposed Kilpatrick's affair with Beatty.

The key record that came to light Thursday, when attorneys for the city said they would no longer oppose its concealment, is a Nov. 1 document marked "Confidential Agreement."

More here.

Concealed weapons exemption passes in VA...

The House of Delegates passed legislation today that would allow information about Virginians with permits to carry concealed handguns to be kept off limits to the public.

House Bill 982, sponsored by Del. Dave Nutter, R-Christiansburg, was originally intended to exempt a state police database of permit-holders from the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. The bill was amended Thursday to allow circuit court clerks to deny public access to the information, and prohibit them from releasing anything more than the names of people who are granted permits.

The bill passed the House by a vote of 97-1 and now heads to the Senate.

Nutter filed the bill in response to a controversy sparked last year by The Roanoke Times, which posted a state police database of concealed carry permit holders on its Web site and published an editorial writer’s column encouraging readers to access the list. Widespread complaints prompted the newspaper to remove the data from its site.

PA House Delays Vote on FOI REform...

Pennsylvania House Republicans engineered a six-day delay Wednesday of a vote on a bill that would greatly expand what Pennsylvanians can learn about the actions of their state and local governments. Supporters of the delay said they needed time to make much-needed repairs to the bill, which passed the Senate unanimously a week earlier. "So much work has been invested in this bill, it would be a terrible shame that you would actually injure your constituents by moving forward with it as it is," said Rep. John Maher, R-Allegheny, who proposed the delay. It passed 100-98, with Republican House Speaker Dennis O'Brien the only representative to cross party lines in voting against the measure. Majority Leader Bill DeWeese, D-Greene, called the move a case of GOP obstructionism and "an obvious, obvious delaying tactic."

More here.

Much, much more on the threatened FOIA ombud move...

If this was to be done on the sly, well, fat chance.

Read more here, including this nugget:

More than 30 open-government groups (including the NFOIC) have signed a letter they will deliver this week to Capitol Hill, "to highlight for congressional appropriators the executive branch's attempt to re-write the law -- signed only five weeks ago by the President," Chris Green, program associate at OpenTheGovernment.org said in an e-mailed request for signatures.


Sens. Cornyn and Leahy don't like the move at all. Not one bit...

VA Donor Anonymity Bill Advances...

Despite protests from open government advocates, a House of Delegates subcommittee on Thursday endorsed a bill that would allow the University of Virginia to withhold the identities of financial donors who demand anonymity.

The bill, sponsored by Del. Glenn Oder, R-Newport News, aims to exempt the bulk of UVa’s massive donor database from Virginia’s open records law.

UVa’s database includes personal information - including net worth, marital status and Social Security numbers - for more than 450,000 potential donors. Fundraising officials at the university rely on the database as part of UVa’s quest to collect $3 billion.

“We want to remain as transparent as possible, but we also have a responsibility to our donors to protect certain personal information that should be kept private,” said UVa spokeswoman Carol Wood.

The Freedom of Information Act subcommittee of the House Committee on General Laws approved the bill in a 3-2 vote with no public testimony or debate Thursday. The bill had been postponed a week earlier over concerns about conflicts of interest that might arise at UVa from anonymous donations.

Open government advocates do not object to the bill’s goal of shielding highly personal information from the Freedom of Information Act. However, they do take issue with a provision of the bill that would allow UVa to hide the identities of any donors who want to stay anonymous.

“It’s very unfortunate that the committee decided to close these records,” said Jennifer Perkins, executive director of the Coalition for Open Government. “If the bill goes forward, the public would have no way of knowing if someone is trying to buy their son’s or daughter’s way into the university.”

More here.

Why This Access Stuff Is Important....

If you need a TEXTBOOK example of the damage done by government secrecy, look no further than this: a tiny little change in Texas law that allowed police to hide their backgrounds. See in this editorial the damage done:

In San Antonio, however, no one can look at records that tell you a civil servant's qualifications for his or her job. As Express-News staff writers Guillermo Contreras and Todd Bensman reported, that's because of the obscure provisions of a misguided law passed by the Legislature back in 1987.

The police unions that lobbied for Section 143.089 of the Local Government Code say it protects police officers from becoming targets of character assassination by rumor and innuendo. And clearly there's a level of credibility that should be met before an issue in a personnel file becomes a matter of public interest.

In practice, however, Section 143.089 is used to shield unscrupulous behavior from public view. In the case of former police officer Joseph Evans, the Express-News reported, it prevents the public from finding out how he was able to obtain a job with the San Antonio Police Department despite a drunken driving conviction, attempting to hide an arrest for criminal trespass, a hit-and-run conviction and a prior SAPD rejection of his application.

The public only knows those details because they became accessible during Evans' federal trial on charges related to methamphetamine trafficking. The public doesn't know why former Deputy Chief Gilbert Sandoval overrode the recommendations of SAPD screeners not to hire Evans in the first place.

More here.

A Clinton Records Dispute

The National Archives wants a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit seeking quick access to records about a health care task force Hillary Rodham Clinton headed as first lady, or delay the release for about a year.

Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest group, has complained in a lawsuit that the National Archives isn't moving fast enough on its April 2006 request to see the documents. The archives says Judicial Watch is trying to jump ahead of those who made earlier requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

"(The National Archives) does not believe that Judicial Watch or any other requester should receive more favorable treatment outside of our existing queue system," said Miriam Kleiman, a spokeswoman for the archives. "We have therefore asked the court to leave Judicial Watch's FOIA request in its proper place by dismissing or postponing any ruling in the case."

The documents are at the Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, which the archives operates. A year's delay would keep the documents from public view until after the Nov. 4 presidential election.

More here.