Yeah, these cats ought to give it up. Nice work by the Goldwater Institute. The Arizona Court of Appeals today unanimously ruled in favor of the Goldwater Institute in rebuking the Congress (Ariz.) Elementary School District for its efforts to permanently deny public information sought by four parents and taxpayers. “This is the second court [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 3. Access law | Tagged: Arizona, Goldwater Institute, School district | Leave a Comment »
Passing along from my friends at Sunlight…. Next week, Congress is going to vote on a budget that may decimate funding for some of the most important technology programs that help make Washington accountable. Take action now to Save the Data. Data.gov, USASpending.gov, the IT Dashboard and other federal data transparency and government accountability programs [...]
Filed under: 7. Electronic records | Tagged: Sunlight Foundation, United States Congress | 1 Comment »
Right here in chilly, grey Missouri, we have a nice little FOI flap brewing. It seems that the state’s former treasurer can’t find pretty much any of the records worth looking at for, well…the entire four years she was in office! Here is Politico: Sarah Steelman’s political opponents aren’t finding much daylight in their Sunshine [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 3. Access law, 4. Finding records | Tagged: Claire McCaskill, Missouri, Sarah Steelman | Leave a Comment »
From Iowa, a fresh helping of FOI hypocrisy: Lawmakers are considering creation of a new board to better enforce Iowa’s open records and meetings laws, but there’s a notable exemption from the board’s oversight: the governor and his office. The board’s oversight also would not extend to operations of the legislative and judicial branches, reflecting [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: FOI ombudsman, Iowa, remedies | Leave a Comment »
Thanks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for this…. Tomorrow the House Oversight Committee is holding a hearing titled, “Why Isn’t the Department of Homeland Security Meeting the President’s Standard on FOIA?” As we wrote last October, redacted DHS emails revealed the agency was targeting certain Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and certain FOIA requesters—such as activist [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 3. Access law, 7. Electronic records | Tagged: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Freedom of Information Act, United States Department of Homeland Security | 1 Comment »
Details about every new court challenge to the withholding of information by the Obama Administration are now available on a new website developed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Designed to bring more transparency to FOIA withholding decisions, the new site — http://FOIAproject.org — gives the American people a way to track all instances in which a federal agency’s [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: digital transparency, Freedom of Information Act, online tools, Syracuse University | Leave a Comment »
Newsy has a nice rundown… And Jack Shafer, as is so often the case, makes the point so, so, so much better than I have. Here’s the money graf: Take, for example, the lawsuit filed against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker by the Associated Press and the Madison, Wis., Isthmus after his team ignored open records requests for [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 2. Doc state of mind, 3. Access law | Tagged: email, Freedom of information legislation, Jack Shafer, university records | Leave a Comment »
A new piece on the FOI-academic freedom debate from Miller-McClune…. The more I read my own quotes on this issue, the more I recognize what years in academia has done to my brain, for good, and for ill. I tend to overanalyze issues like these when interesting academic questions exists, even if I think they [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 3. Access law | Tagged: academic freedom, FOI at work | Leave a Comment »
The Wyoming Supreme Court ruled today that the salaries of individual school district employees are a matter of public record. The state’s high court upheld a Laramie County District Court decision in favor of Cheyenne Newspapers, Inc., which publishes the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. The newspaper in a letter dated Dec. 11, 2009 requested the school district [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 2. Doc state of mind, 3. Access law, 6. Overcoming denials | Tagged: employee salaries, School district, Wyoming Supreme Court | Leave a Comment »
This is the first in a series of stories The Slat lake Tribune is doing on the state’s public records law, and it has a great anecdotal opening: In 1992, the first appeal brought before the State Records Committee under Utah’s newly adopted open-records law came from The Salt Lake Tribune, which wanted the Department [...]
Filed under: 3. Access law, 6. Overcoming denials | Tagged: Freedom of information legislation, Utah | Leave a Comment »
