What would cause a law professor to sue the school he’s working for? Okay, eliminate the obvious employment law-related causes of action, and what are you left with? And is this a case of biting the hand that feeds you?
Arkansas Law Prof Sues Law School Over Admissions Data
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Editorial: Colorado voted ballots still too hard to access
Coloradans achieved the important right to review voted ballots as open records through a costly legal battle culminating in a state court of appeals victory in 2011.
And the legislature affirmed this critical citizen right to see voted ballots in a bill it passed the following year. Continue...
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New Jersey: Does An OPRA Request Constitute Harassment?
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Editorial: The FAA’s Drone Registry Shouldn’t Be Exempt From FOIA Requests
When its proposed national drone registry comes online, the Federal Aviation Administration will be poised to collect the names and street addresses of recreational drone users across the country. Who will be able to access that data after it is collected? If the FAA’s drone task force has its way, the answer will be not journalists. Continue...
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Wyoming Commissioner files Freedom of Information request on commission
At the regular Natrona County Commission meeting last week, Commissioner Steve Schlager accused the commission’s chairman and vice chairman of withholding information and making decisions outside of regular sessions.
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Editorial: Data on teacher performance in Virginia should be available to the public
Brian Davison, a parent in Loudoun County, may be a bit of a gadfly. But he's on point with his insistence that parents have more information about the performance of their public schools.
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Massachusetts public records bill gets mixed reviews
Under a new bill, Massachusetts would join 47 other states that allow people to recoup legal fees after successfully suing for access to public records.
The legislature’s first move in more than 40 years to update the Massachusetts public records law is getting mixed reviews from some government transparency advocates.
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Chattanooga plans effort to get rid of decades of stored records
In the dim light of a smartphone, the lettering on the side of the 10-odd white storage boxes is faintly legible: "Confidential Medical Information. Medical Personnel Only." A few feet away, in this darkened corner of a storage warehouse on East Main Street, another box is labeled "Unpaid Parking Tickets." There are long cabinets with flat drawers — the label on one reads "TVA Project." Two mattresses sprawl incongruously nearby.
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Many Virginia officials ignore state sunshine law
State law might say some government records must be disclosed, but that's not the way many Virginia officials see things.
A statewide test by 13 newspapers to see what happens when Virginians ask about information that state law says officials must disclose shows the state's four-decade-old Freedom of Information Act is widely disregarded.
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Appointees to key positions in Nevada remain little-known to taxpayers
Nevada's Public Employees Retirement System, with more than $34 billion in assets, is overseen by a panel of seven public-sector workers appointed by the governor.
But as a recent nationwide report from the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity pointed out, Nevada taxpayers don't know much about the individuals charged with managing the state retirement system for nearly all state and local government employees.
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Illinois police, public library settle public records lawsuit for $67k
The Orland Police Department in Illinois has settled a lawsuit, paying out $12,000 for violating and not responding to Freedom of Information Act requests by local watchdogs.
Also, the Orland Park Public Library settled a lawsuit for $55,000 for the same reason.
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Report: New York's regional councils lack transparency
New York's regional council process that has awarded nearly $3 billion since 2011 for economic development lacks transparency and doesn’t adequately report on the outcome of various projects, according to a new report.
The report from the Citizens Budget Commission concluded that state hasn’t provided enough details to properly evaluate whether the 10 regional councils are creating jobs with the money doled out by the state.
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Editorial: Open data grows in 2015 (but not enough)
As 2015 winds to a close, we can look back on a year of success stories and failures when it comes to transparency in government.
At the start of the year, the federal government began releasing its enterprise data inventories — comprehensive indexes of the data sets it collects — to the public. The move, which came in response to a Sunlight Foundation Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, was a major victory for government transparency.
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Editorial: Disclosure on lump sum payments in Texas
Lump sum payments from campaign and political action committees to consultants are blocking the public view of Texas campaign spending.
At the moment, the public is being asked to trust that these dollars have valid final destinations. That’s because they are simply reported, sometimes in six-figure amounts, as “consulting” or “consulting fees,” according to a recent San Antonio Express-News article.
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Push is on to make police investigation records public in Kansas
The more than 27-year-old case file on the disappearance of Randy Leach, a Linwood high school honor student, must be thousands of pages.
But it's impossible to know because the Leavenworth County Sheriff's Office and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, who investigated the long-ago mystery, refuse to release the records even to Leach's parents, Harold and Alberta Leach.
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Ohio treasurer asks charter schools to put finances online
Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel is cajoling thousands of local governments, public universities, the Ohio pension systems and others to post their expenditures on his government transparency website, OhioCheckbook.com, but until recently he had omitted Ohio’s 395 charter schools – an entire wing of public education that costs taxpayers nearly $1 billion in state funding each year – from his call list.
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Connecticut Supreme Court affirms teacher misconduct records are public
The Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed Monday that records of alleged misconduct by teachers at public schools and universities in the state are public records subject to release under the Freedom of Information Act.
In a unanimous decision by Justice Dennis G. Eveleigh, the state’s highest court rejected an effort by a former University of Connecticut Health Center professor to block the release of a report about allegations he was abusive to staff.
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Cybersecurity bill would add secrecy to public records laws
A proposed law meant to encourage companies to share information about cyberthreats with the U.S. government includes measures that could significantly limit what details, if any, the public can review about the program through federal and state public records laws.
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Wisconsin DOJ handling open records requests faster, response time down from 2014
Officials with the Wisconsin Department of Justice say the agency is responding faster to open record requests.
A DOJ news release Tuesday says the agency took an average of 20 days to close a request this year, down from 59 days last year. Since the agency's new Office of Open Government opened in June, the average response time has been 16 days. Continue...
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D.C. Council to vote on public access to police video
D.C. police may get the first green light for the proposed body camera program when the D.C. Council takes up compromise legislation allowing public access and lifting many but not all restrictions.
Calling it much improved from the total secrecy plans first proposed by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser in April and the modified ban outlined in September, the D.C. Open Government Coalition on Monday wrote all Council members with praise for the leadership of Judiciary Committee chair Kenyan McDuffie and offering final recommendations.
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