As this decision makes clear, Vermont FOI law provides no right of access to law enforcement investigative records — even after the case is closed! That’s a wee problem, folks… The Vermont Supreme Court on Friday granted a partial victory to the Rutland Herald in the newspaper’s effort to get access to records concerning allegations [...]
Filed under: 3. Access law, 6. Overcoming denials | Tagged: exemptions, Law Enforcement, Vermont | Leave a Comment »
I warned you last year that this was likely coming somewhere… In Virginia, the attorney general, skeptical of global warming, tried to use his subpoena powers to build a fraud case against a climatology professor. In Wisconsin, Republican Party officials sought the emails of a history professor, trying to demonstrate that he had misused his public account [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 3. Access law | Tagged: exemptions, Maryland, proposed exemptions, universities | Leave a Comment »
From the Reporters Committee: Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill Thursday that exempts any photographs, video or audio recordings that depict or record the “killing of a person” from the mandatory disclosure requirements under the state’s public records laws. The bill, which Florida media organizations have fought against, would allow access to such recordings by certain [...]
Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 3. Access law | Tagged: exemptions, Florida, Legislation | Leave a Comment »
This is an exercise that all state open government advocates should engage in: scouring the statute books for those pesky hidden exemptions. In Vermont, there are 280 and growing… In 2007, a state report said there were 206 exemptions written into Vermont’s open government laws. In the 2010 election campaign, Jim Condos, then running for [...]
Filed under: 3. Access law, 6. Overcoming denials | Tagged: exemptions, Vermont | Leave a Comment »
A great idea for Sunshine Week is to inform citizens about the damage wrought by amorphous, overbroad exemptions like this: Officials at a conservative fiscal advocacy group thought they had struck political gold when an email surfaced recently from a union official threatening to withhold support from Democrats in the fall elections over an anti-labor [...]
Filed under: 3. Access law, 6. Overcoming denials | Tagged: exemptions, Virginia, working papers exemption | Leave a Comment »
