Hawaii City Council must cancel closed-door actions

A circuit judge issued a temporary restraining order that essentially forces the Hawaii County Council to cancel a council reorganization plan that it discussed in a private meeting, the AP reported. The council will meet on Aug. 4 to rehear all measures. This order was prompted by a lawsuit filed by West Hawaii Today that alleges that the council violated the Sunshine Law by discussing the plan in private.

Members of the Hawaii County Council violated the state’s open-government law by privately discussing a council reorganization plan, a state judge said.

Circuit Judge Ronald Ibarra on July 23 issued a temporary restraining order, forbidding the council from doing business. But he delayed the start of the TRO until Aug. 5 to give the council time to rectify the situation.

The council has scheduled a special meeting for Aug. 4 to cancel the reorganization. It also plans to rehear all measures it considered after the June 16 changes went into effect.

More here.

Wyo. open meetings/records woes

Shawn Whitman, chief of staff for Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, said closing a meeting was "an unfortunate misunderstanding on our part of the state statute," the AP reported. A Barrasso staffer told reporters that the meeting at a restaurant was private though it was being attended by a quorum of Fremont County commissioners.

Closing a meeting to the public between staffers for Sen. John Barrasso and Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis and a quorum of Fremont Count commissioners was a mistake. That’s was Barrasso’s chief of staff Shawn Whitman said Wednesday in response to an allegation by open-government advocates that the press was illegally barred from the gathering.

More here.

Update on Wind River Indian Reservation case:

Fremont County Coroner Ed McAuslan said he's bound by federal law to not release details on the deaths of three girls on the Wind River Indian Reservation, KVOW/KTAK reported. Wyoming Sen. Cale Case has said he's drafting legislation to make coroner records open, but McAuslan said that won't affect this case, which is governed by federal law. McAuslan said he will not violate laws and face a fine and/or jail time for releasing information.

Fremont County Coroner Ed McAuslan said he will not risk jail time by divulging information about a federal case involving the deaths of three girls last year on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Fremont County.

His comment comes on the heels of Republican Sen. Cale Case’s recent announcement he’s drafting state legislation that would specify all coroner records be open for public review unless privileged or confidential by law.

McAuslan said Case notified him this week by email of his intentions to draft the disclosure of information bill.

More here.

N.J. to limit disclosure of child death details

State reports on child-death cases will no longer include details of the Division of Youth and Family Services' prior actions,the Star-Ledger reported. State officials say the federal monitor who oversees child welfare reform provides enough oversight; reports will now simply include trends rather than the histories of the deceased children who were involved with a state program. Officials say the decision was made "out of respect for surviving family members;" however, it was the release of details in the 2003 death case of 7-year-old Faheem Williams that led to DYFS reform. State law does require the department to disclose the name, birthday, date of death and whether the families of fatal child abuse victims were under DYFS supervision. However, the Child Advocate reports provided more details than required, details that often led to policy changes.

Leaders at the agencies most responsible for New Jersey's child-protection agency say the state no longer will publicly disclose the details of DYFS prior actions when a child it has supervised dies from abuse or neglect.

The decision signals a change in policy after the state issued annual reports detailing what happened in each child-death case for the past six years. Instead, the state will issue reports focusing on trends it has found.

State officials say reporting individual cases is not a useful way to assess how the child-welfare system is working and publicizing details could hurt victims' families. They say with a federal monitor overseeing child welfare reform, there is enough oversight.

More here.

Group requests audio/videotapes concerning Gates' arrest

Judicial Watch filed a Massachusetts Public Records Request for any audiotapes or videotapes recorded before, during or after the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, according to Marketwire.

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has filed a Massachusetts Public Records Request with the Cambridge, MA, Police Department regarding the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates. Specifically, Judicial Watch seeks the following records:

Any audiotapes or videotapes recorded prior to, during, or after the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates on July 16, 2009.

On July 16, Sergeant James Crowley responded to a 911 phone call from a passerby reporting two men attempting to force open the door at Professor Gates' Harvard Square home. Professor Gates claims that he had just returned from a trip to China and his front door was jammed. He asked his driver to help him force it open.

More here.

Also, 911 Tape Raises Questions in Gates Case, NYTimes: "The woman who called 911 to report a possible breaking and entering at the home of Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. told the dispatcher that she had “no idea” if the two men she saw were breaking in and said that, in fact, they might live there." The recording was released by the Cambridge Police Department.

Florida State sues NCAA for legal fees

Florida State wants the NCAA to pay its legal fees associated with a suit against the university and NCAA for not releasing records related to academic cheating sanctions, the AP reported. The university says it can't make the records public because of an NCAA Web site that forbids downloading or printing.

Florida State is back in court — suing the NCAA.

The school said Friday its wants the NCAA to pay its legal fees and other costs incurred in a suit filed against the university and the athletic governing body for failing to comply with Florida's public records law.

General Counsel Betty Steffen said it has been technically impossible for the school to make records in the case public because an NCAA website prohibits downloading or printing.

More here.

N.J. Government Records Council loses open records suit

The New Jersey Foundation for Open Government won its case against the New Jersey Government Records Council. The council, designed to help enforce open records laws, violated the law itself by refusing to release the e-mail addresses of those who had filed complaints with the council. The foundation had requested acknowledgment notices sent to each person who filed a complaint; the council had released the records but redacted the e-mail addresses on the grounds of privacy.

The New Jersey Foundation for Open Government (NJFOG) announced today that it
has won a lawsuit against the New Jersey Government Records Council (GRC) for violating the Open Public Records Act (OPRA), the very statute the GRC was created to enforce.

NJFOG had requested from the GRC complaint acknowledgement notices that the GRC emails to complainants. In response, the GRC had withheld the individual complainants’ email addresses. On July 17, Mercer County Superior Court Judge Douglas H. Hurd, J.S.C. “ordered that the defendant GRC grants Plaintiff NJFOG access in unredacted form to the requested GRC acknowledgement
notices. GRC shall comply with this Order by August 14, 2009.”

More here.

Appellate court says police internal affairs reports are public

The 4th District Appellate Court ruled that police internal affairs reports are public records, The State Journal-Register reported. The court said this is so no matter what the results of the investigation are. The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by a dentist who complained that a sheriff's deputy roughed him up for driving improperly during a kidney-stone attack. The dentist, Mark Gekas, didn't sue for excessive force but only after the department didn't turn over copies of the internal affairs report to him.

Police internal affairs files are public records, even if investigators conclude that accused officers did nothing wrong, a state appeals court has ruled.

The decision came Monday in a lawsuit filed by Springfield dentist Mark Gekas, who says he was roughed up by Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy John Gillette during a 2006 traffic stop.

Gekas sued Sheriff Neil Williamson after the department refused to give him copies of internal affairs reports. The department said the records are part of Gillette’s personnel file and that making them public would violate the deputy’s right to privacy.

More here.

CREW not pleased with release of health care visitors list

The list of White House visits by health care executives released by President Barack Obama indicate that private meeting began shortly after he took office, the AP reported. The list was released after Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington threatened to sue the White House for the logs, which are maintained by the Secret Service. CREW says it will continue seeking visitor logs from the White House and that the disclosure "in no way satisfies" its request. "The actual visitor records likely would indicate with whom each official met, the administration official who requested clearance for the visitor, the time of the meeting, the duration of the meeting and, in some cases, the purpose of the meeting. In addition, no information was provided regarding any visits to the vice president's residence," the group said in a written statement.

President Obama's administration began holding private meetings with health industry executives and lobbyists at the White House a few weeks after he took office, a visitor list released Wednesday night by the White House shows.

Richard Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Assn., was at the White House on Feb. 4 and has been back at least half a dozen times since, most recently May 22. Other industry executives making February visits included health insurance company chief executives Angela Braly of WellPoint Inc. and Jay Gellert of Health Net Inc.

Gellert, a $500 donor to Obama's presidential campaign, was there Feb. 10, twice in March and on May 11. Braly visited on Feb. 13.

More here.

Also, WH list of health exec visits inadequate, group says from Politico
And, Obama hold on records raises hypocrisy charge from Washington Times: "Sending us a letter is not the same as releasing the records. There is a lot of information in those records that is not in the letter," CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said. "Releasing names for political expediency is not the same thing as transparency. This is not the type of transparency they promised."

Wyo. senator proposes public review of coroner records

Wyoming Sen. Cale Case has drafted legislation that would make all coroner records open for public review unless they're privileged or confidential by law, the AP reported. This would call for state coroners to redact privileged or confidential information in files so that as much information as possible is disclosed. His legislation is in regards to the death of three teenage girls on the Wind River Indian Reservation. The FBI investigated the case, but the U.S. attorney's office in Cheyenne has refused to comment. The suspicion is that juveniles are facing criminal charges.

The federal government's refusal to say what killed three teenage girls on the Wind River Indian Reservation last year is driving a Wyoming state senator to try to force county coroners to open their records to the public.

Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, has drafted legislation that would specify that all coroner records would be open for public review unless they're privileged or confidential by law.

Case's proposal calls for directing the state's 23 elected coroners to redact privileged or confidential information in their files to allow the fullest possible disclosure.

More here.

Budget cut will 'gut the progress' of Penn. Office of Open Records

Terry Mutchler, Pennsylvania's first executive director of the Office of Open Records, says the projected budget cuts will defeat the purpose of the newly created office. The office is expecting to be underfunded by $300,000. With such a cut, staff will have to be let go, and more and more citizens will have no option (other than going to court, if they can afford it) for contesting a denial of requested records. Since May 2009, the office has processed about 600 appeals, 2,400 e-mails, 1,200 phone calls and conducted more than 200 FOI training sessions with nine staffers. Some decisions have gone to court, which requires full-time legal attention. "But the reality is that the office is in its infancy and does not have fat to cut. This is not just cutting money -- it's cutting the commitment to ensuring open and honest government."

All is not well at Pennsylvania's new Office of Open Records.

As its first executive director, that is a very difficult but necessary truth to express. I am asking citizens and other open-government advocates for their help. We are at a cross-roads and it is only fair that citizens have an accurate and honest picture of what's happening with this portion of their government.

Pennsylvania rewrote its archaic Right-to-Know Law and created an independent office to resolve records disputes. As of Jan. 1, all records of the government were presumed to be open. Gov. Ed Rendell and Sen. Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi championed this cause, and I applaud them for pulling Pennsylvania out of the dark ages.

More here.

See also, Budget cuts threaten disclosure

White House CIO says 'tectonic shift" is needed

White House Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra knows change will not be easy, especially when trying to reprogram government agencies in terms of transparency, National Journal Online reported. In June, he released a Web-based IT dashboard that showed how government IT projects were progressing. It shed light on 45 Veterans Affairs projects that were lagging behind schedule or over budget. All were temporarily halted.

White House Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra believes a "huge, tectonic shift" is needed for government agencies to accept a new era of open government, which has become a major mission of the Obama administration. The bottom line, he told a high-tech conference on Tuesday, is that "at the end of the day we're stewards of taxpayer dollars and we need to be open and transparent around using that money." The latest project to launch in that space was in June when he unveiled a Web-based IT dashboard that sheds light on the performance of IT projects across government. As a result of that initiative, the Veterans Affairs Department said it was temporarily halting 45 projects that were found to be behind schedule or over budget.

"It's okay if a project is behind schedule as long as we understand what is causing the delay," Kundra said. "We need to understand the root cause so we can solve the problem." At the VA, the worst offender was 110 percent more expensive than planned and 17 months behind schedule. The agency plans to audit all the projects in question to determine whether additional resources or new management teams can get them back on track. "If we didn't highlight this and make data available, we would be continuing to plow good money after bad money," Kundra explained. Putting data out there through the IT dashboard and other initiatives forces agencies to take action and drive change across government, he said.

More here.

Justice Department argues for protection of Cheney's interview

The Justice Department is arguing that the release of Dick Cheney's interview with prosecutors concerning the CIA leak case could create a chilling effect, Politico reported. Department attorney Jeffrey Smith argued his case in front of Judge Emmet Sullivan in an FOIA lawsuit, which seeks the release of Cheney's interview records. Smith asked that the records be kept secret for five to 10 years so that it would be more likely for the information to be used "for historical purposes and not for political embarrassment." Sullivan has not stated his opinion on the case but did say at one point that the Justice Department seemed to be asking him to create a new vice presidents' exemption to the FOIA.

President Barack Obama’s Justice Department is arguing that former Vice President Dick Cheney’s interview with prosecutors in the CIA leak case should remain secret for five to 10 years to persuade high-level government officials to cooperate in future investigations.

“In making public the vice pesident’s interview, you will chill them,” Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Smith told Judge Emmet Sullivan during a two-hour hearing Tuesday on a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking release of records about the Cheney interview, which took place in 2004.

Sullivan sounded highly skeptical of the government’s arguments, but he said he had not decided how he would rule in the case. "Where do I draw the line? This happened five years ago,” the judge said. “Would there be impediments to putting this information in a time capsule?”

More here.

Also, My Take On the DOJ Argument To Withhold Cheney Interview from The FOIA Blog: "The government has stated that Cheney did not ask for confidentiality when interviewed, meaning exemption 7(D) of the FOIA doesn't apply."

And, Saving Dick Cheney from 'The Daily Show'? from Politico: “The government doesn’t want to have what’s in these documents end up on a late-night comedy show,” Sullivan said.

iPods on fire, literally

FOI at Work!
KIRO-TV obtained more than 800 pages of Consumer Product Safety Commission documents detailing iPod-related injuries, including at least 15 incidents of overheating and burning, FOX News reported. The TV station said it took seven months to obtain the documents due to exemptions filed by Apple lawyers. The station requested the information after hearing how an iPod caused a "penny-sized burn" on the chest of Jamie Balderas of Arlington, Wash.

In a report posted on its Web site Tuesday, KIRO-TV says it used the Freedom of Information Act to get more than 800 pages of Consumer Product Safety Commission documents regarding iPod-related injuries and property damage.

Within the documents were details of at least 15 separate incidents where iPods overheated, sparked, smoked, caused burns or caught fire, KIRO-TV said.

The station became interested when Jamie Balderas of Arlington, Wash., was mystified by a penny-sized burn on her chest in Nov. 2008.

More here.

Gov. Kaine's schedule details his travels, sorta

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine's office released a spreadsheet that details where Kaine was from Jan. 1 to July 18, The Roanoke Times reported. This is after his office had denied an FOI request from the GOP for this data. Although the schedule indicates that Kaine didn't travel farther than Washington, D.C., when the General Assembly was in session, the data doesn't distinguish between when travel was related to his position as governor and when it was related to his position as DNC chairman.

Wonder where Gov. Tim Kaine has been?

Republicans and media outlets have been asking that question for weeks, seeking details about Kaine’s schedule since he became chairman of the Democratic National Committee in January. The governor’s office on Tuesday released a spreadsheet that generally accounts for Kaine’s whereabouts every single day from Jan. 1 to July 18. Kaine’s office had previously denied a GOP Freedom of Information Act request for his travel details.

But Kaine spokeswoman Lynda Tran said the governor “has always responded to questions regarding his work and whereabouts and remains willing to respond to these inquiries.” She said the office will release similar details at the end of each month.

More here.

Group requests information on Wy. deaths

The Wyoming Coalition for Open Government asked U.S. District Judge William Downes for information (at least the docket number) on the case involving the death of three Wyoming teenagers, AP reported. The FBI handled the investigation, and no details of the case, including the cause of death, have been released. At this point, it isn't for certain that a juvenile case related to the deaths exists, but comments made to reporters suggest that it does.

An open-government group has asked a federal judge to acknowledge the existence of a juvenile criminal case related to the deaths of three girls on the Wind River Indian Reservation.

The girls — Ohetica Win Elyxis Gardner, 13; Winter Rose Thomas, 14; and Alexandrea "Alex" Whiteplume, 15 — were found dead in a tribal housing complex south of Riverton on June 4, 2008. The FBI has handled the investigation into the girls' deaths.

The Wyoming Coalition for Open Government asked U.S. District Judge William Downes, chief federal judge for Wyoming, in a letter Monday to reveal at least the docket number in the case so the group could intervene in any proceedings.

More here.

Public health issue raises Sunshine Law questions

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources might have violated the Sunshine Law by not informing the public of a report indicating that dangerously high levels of E. coli were present in the Lake of the Ozarks, the Springfield News-Leader reported. The Lake Ozarks Water Alliance and the Lake Sun Leader newspaper had both asked for the routine reports and were denied access.

Attorney General Chris Koster's office is investigating whether the Department of Natural Resources broke the Sunshine Law by withholding a report showing dangerously high levels of E. coli in the Lake of the Ozarks to protect businesses and tourism dollars from a loss of revenue.

"Open government is in the best interest of Missouri, never more so than when concerns over public health are at issue," Koster, a Democrat, said in a statement.

DNR Director Mark Templeton said his agency turned over related documents to Koster's office Friday, but he declined to reveal their contents.

More here.

Sanford's travel records raise questions

Anderson Independent-Mail is questioning if Gov. Mark Sanford's trips (to China, Germany, Poland, London and Brazil) benefited South Caroline and why they were so over the top, considering that Sanford paints himself as a frugal man.

As evidenced by travel records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, Gov. Mark Sanford wasn’t as tight with taxpayer dollars as one might have expected for the man who slept on a cot in his congressional office and spoke so forcefully against accepting federal stimulus money for our state.

During his first campaign for governor, in fact, one of Sanford’s campaign points was criticism of travel expenses for other state officials, according to The Associated Press.

One has to wonder if the question of expenses would have even been raised had there not been so much dismay over how much some of those travels have cost the state in other ways. And how much they have cost him personally.

More here.

Electronic trial proceedings are public records in Fla.

The Florida Supreme Court rejected a recommendation to protect judicial audio and video recordings, the AP reported.

The state Supreme Court has ordered that electronic recordings of trial proceedings are public records.

The court Thursday unanimously rejected a recommendation from a judicial commission that audio and video recordings be protected unless a judge approves their release. The high court cited the state's open government laws in siding for openness.

The ruling comes after an appeals court rejected a request from The Tampa Tribune for audio recordings in a criminal sentencing. At issue was whether privileged conversations that weren't part of the official court record could be heard on the recordings.

More here.

Wis. S.C. decides newspapers are entitled to state personnel records

The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld a circuit court decision that provided newspapers access to state personnel records, the State Bar of Wisconsin reported. State agencies had refused to disclose names of state employees to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Lakeland Times based on a collective bargaining agreement with the Wisconsin State Employees Union. The Supreme Court determined that the Legislature didn't properly amend the Public Records Law to include its agreement with WSEU.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed two newspapers were entitled to access state personnel records after it concluded that the Legislature failed to properly amend the open records laws to prevent such disclosure.

But before the court could even reach these determinations in Milw. Journal Sentinel v. Wisc. Dept. of Admin., 2009 WI 79, it had to find that it was empowered to review the Legislature’s work. A majority of the court concluded that it was, given its mandate to review statutes for compliance with the constitution.

In dissent, Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson said that the court’s review was unduly interfering in the affairs of an equal branch of government.

More here.

E-mail details how staff responded to Sanford's disappearance

FOI at Work!

The State received almost 600 pages of e-mail and phone records from Gov. Mark Sanford and hi staff during the governor's secret June 18-24 trip to Argentina to visit his lover. Staffers downplayed the governor's disappearance, and chief of staff, Scott English, made 15 calls to the governor's cell -- none of which were picked up. Also, several media organizations pleaded with Joel Sawyer, Sanford's communication director, for an exclusive -- and positive -- interview. (Also see Media Outlets Offered to Spin Sanford Story here.)

Gov. Mark Sanford’s chief of staff, Scott English, called the governor’s cell phones 15 times during the governor’s secret trip to Argentina to visit his lover last month. But the governor never picked up.

Meanwhile Sanford’s communications director, Joel Sawyer, worked to minimize the fact the governor had been out of touch with his staff for about four days.

Records released Monday show Sawyer juggled e-mails and media calls from around the nation, giving a consistent message that was later proven to be untrue.

More here.