Good News From Wyoming…

Posted on April 23, 2011 by Charles N. Davis

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 [...]

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Open Government at the Federal Level on the Chopping Block…

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Charles N. Davis

Short-sighted slashing in Washington… Government transparency advocates warn that spending cuts in the federal budget passed last week could close the door on President Obama’s ambitious “open government” goals and hamper efforts to open up federal agencies to closer public scrutiny. The budget deal slashes the Electronic Government Fund from a proposed $35 million to $8 million — not [...]

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The Folks Behind the WWW Are Unhappy…

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Charles N. Davis

Steve Bratt is the CEO of the World Wide Web Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web. The mission of the organization is to empower people through transformative programs that leverage the web as a medium for positive change. In his inaugural speech, President Barack Obama pledged support for open [...]

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Illinois Poised to Hide Gun Registry

Posted on April 10, 2011 by Charles N. Davis

Hiding the identity of gun owners is always a political hot potato, as elected officials shrink from the ire of those who argue that there is a privacy right buried somewhere in the Second Amendment. I think there is a legitimate debate to be had here, but unfortunately, it seldom happens as few in position [...]

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See, This is the Kind of Stuff I Was Worried About…

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Charles N. Davis

WOW, was there an outbreak of FOIA fear-mongering today, thanks to the academic FOI stuff in Wisconsin and Michigan. Folks are overreacting just a wee bit out here. Calm, people, calm… My reading pile began with this piece on The Huffington Post, in which a fellow who probably knows a great deal about law wrote [...]

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The New York Review of Books Weighs in On Cronon…

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Charles N. Davis

Another day, another take on the UW-Madison e-mail saga. Here is a critical graf: The tumult and the shouting have also obscured a second crucial point, that Freedom of Information Acts, as Cronon himself states, are precious tools of American democracy. And anyone, as the Republicans claim, has the right to invoke them. But that [...]

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Catching Up On This Week’s FOIA Hearing

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Charles N. Davis

Sorry it took me a day, but some reaction from Wednesday’s FOIA hearing: Republicans in Congress are airing results from one of their first formal investigations of the Obama administration, an inquiry into secretive reviews by political advisers at the Homeland Security Department of hundreds of Freedom of Information requests. The allegations by Republicans set [...]

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So, What Gives When FOI Meets Academic Freedom? On FOI As A Partisan Tool….

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Charles N. Davis

So, Professor Bill Cronon writes an Op-Ed for the New York Times about the several ways in which he believes that Scott Walker and the current leadership of the Republican Party in Wisconsin have departed not just from the longstanding culture of civility and good government in this state, but in fact from important traditions [...]

Filed under: 2. Doc state of mind, 3. Access law, 7. Electronic records, 8. Officials' perspectives | Tagged: , , , | 7 Comments »

It’s Hard to Argue in Favor of Autopsy reports, but Let Me Try…

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Charles N. Davis

Nice job by Patch to keep public attention on a bad bill in Connecticut: Perhaps no bill better illustrates the conflicting interest of the public’s right to know and a person’s privacy than S.B. 1054. The bill, now before the Judiciary Committee, proposes that parents of a murdered child could block disclosure of the autopsy [...]

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Knight Open Government Survey: The Ship of State, She Turns Slowly…

Posted on March 13, 2011 by Charles N. Davis

The 2011 Knight Open Government Survey is out to kick off Sunshine Week, and it contains all kinds of interesting data. Here is the lede of the release: On his first day in office in January 2009, President Barack Obama issued a presidential memorandum instructing federal agencies to “usher in a new era of open [...]

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