A bill to toughen Pennsylvania’s primary open meetings law for governments is on its way to the House after Senate passage. The state Senate voted 48-to-2 on Tuesday to increase penalties for first-time intentional violations of the Sunshine Law to a fine of up to $1,000. Second-time offenders could be hit with a $2,000 fine, and taxpayers [...]
Filed under: 3. Access law | Tagged: Legislation, open meetings, Pennsylvania, Sunshine Law | Leave a Comment »
I’d like to say, “Yeah, well, of course…” University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan says the school plans to use “all available exemptions” under the state’s freedom of information act as it responds to a formal legal request from a conservative group seeking e-mails and documents written by a former university climate scientist. The American Tradition Institute’s [...]
Filed under: 3. Access law | Tagged: Climategate, Michael Mann, University of Virginia | Leave a Comment »
After rumors and some public comments about toxicity in the county courthouse, KWQC News did the right thing — they FOIAd the reports. The Knox County (Ill.) board is trying to figure out what to do with the courthouse. Board members voted to renovate the building and hired a construction company; however, a few board members [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 2. Doc state of mind | Tagged: EPA, FOI at work, Illinois, toxic reports | Leave a Comment »
A great FOI-driven story documenting the national outbreak of crazy…. Members of Congess reported a record-high number of threats to their safety in 2010, according to The Hill. According to documents obtained by The Hill through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the FBI investigated 26 threats of violence against lawmakers (and occasionally, their family members) in [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 2. Doc state of mind, 4. Finding records | Tagged: Federal Bureau of Investigation, FOI at work | Leave a Comment »
Efforts to improve Wyoming public records and open meetings laws have moved from conflict to cooperation, members of a legislative committee learned here Friday. Officials from the Wyoming Press Association, the Wyoming Association of Municipalities and the Wyoming County Commissioners Association sat side by side before the Legislature’s Joint Judiciary Interim Committee and explained recent [...]
Filed under: 3. Access law, 8. Officials' perspectives | Tagged: FOI legislation, Wyoming | Leave a Comment »
My buddy Joel Campbell takes the whole cost issue of HB477 apart in a must-read column: Many proponents of the failed HB477 argued that the government needed to control the costs of voluminous public records requests and limit the ability of the public to “inspect” a record free of charge. Before such policies get blindly [...]
Filed under: 3. Access law | Tagged: costs, HB477 | Leave a Comment »
As referenced in an earlier post, I appeared on Fox Business News’ Stossel program to argue against closing gun registries and concealed weapons permits. It was a lively, interesting exchange, far more entertaining than I had anticipated. Well, it’s been running all weekend, and I can time it by the hateful e-mails I get How [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 3. Access law | Tagged: gun permits, Hate mail, proposed exemptions, Stossel | Leave a Comment »
One of my doc students, a recovering lawyer named Jon Peters, recently published a most interesting piece in the Harvard Law & Policy Review on Wikileaks, the First Amendment and the Press. Now Forbes has picked it up as well…and Wikileaks itself tweeted it….and the rest, as they say, is history. Jon, you’re a media [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 3. Access law | Tagged: Jon Peters, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks | Leave a Comment »
An opinion by the Illinois Attorney General calling for the release of results of medical testing on prison guards who filed successful workers’ compensation claims speaks of the public’s fundamental right to know how its money is spent. Despite this broad language, this single decision announced Monday in response to a Belleville News-Democrat Freedom of [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Cleveland Scene does a fine job of illuminating an example of a rather troubling trend… Five years before Cuyahoga County Recorder Pat O’Malley resigned in May 2008 — one of the first dominoes to fall in the county’s ongoing shame game — he quietly closed a deal that garnered little interest at the time. It [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 7. Electronic records | Tagged: Cleveland, pricing | Leave a Comment »
