Open Records

We give that advice to bloggers–don’t wait for paid reporters to file Freedom of Information Act requests–go ahead and do it yourself. There are too many units of government for reporters to keep track of under the best of circumstances, and investigative reporters are being laid off right and left.

But the idea to not wait for the press was recently shared by education writer Kent Fischer, who encouraged members of public school boards to not wait for the press. He is encouraging school board members to use the open records process available to them to find out about financial management problems in their school system–before the press finds out.

Fischer is a reporter for the Dallas Morning News. That paper has been running a series on financial problems with the Dallas Independent School District. They’ve uncovered millions of dollars of questionable spending just by looking at public records.

Don’t wait for the press–look into your finances now.

Fischer suggests that board members start by looking at what district credit cards are purchasing. In the case of the DISD, that included included blanket and pillow sets, Star Trek DVDs, iPods, and a subscription to an online dating service.

Update: Check out the comments for an important clarification.

This is the new logo we’re using for the Lucy Burns Institute.  Thoughts?

We installed a traffic meter on WikiFOIA in May 2007. The sitemeter enables us to see that 76% of the people who visit the site find it through a search engine, rather than visiting it from a link on some other website.

The search engine visitors are usually looking for information about salaries of government employees, and secondarily are looking for information about open records legislation and access to state public documents.

I was pleased to see that comparing website visitors in May 2007 to May 2008, WikiFOIA has already had 10 times as many pages viewed in May 2008 as it did the entire month of May in 2007–a little over 10,000 pages viewed in the first eight days of the month.

Since we created WF to make it easy for people to find this kind of information in what we hope is a usefully arranged way, we’re really pleased at how it’s going.

It’s time again for a round-up of the best of FOIA blogging around the country, with yet another selection of blogs we’ve never seen before who are diving into the FOIAsphere.

California: Take two aspirin before you read this story.

Illinois: Why does Gov. Thompson focus so much on the Illinois Sports Facility Authority? Bloggers! The unchecked growth of cynicism staggers us.

Iowa: Chet not like open records. That’s Chet, the gov. Blogger says, “Maybe Culver was inspired by his big pay raise, approved by lawmakers in the middle of the night.” Why is everyone so cynical these days?

Michigan: Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick of Detroit is sad. Why, why is everyone so cynical and quick to rush to judgment these days?

Missouri: The F-sphere is ably represented in Missouri by KY3, who tells the tale of how Gov. Matt Blunt is striking back against the lawsuit he faces by targeting the e-mails of Jeff Harris. Look forward to many hours of innocent entertainment and education of Missourians on how open records and email works.

New Jersey: There’s a hospital in Hoboken that got a $52 million bond from the taxpayers to rescue it from financial disaster, wouldn’t open its books, and now the taxpayers will be left holding the bag. Why is everyone so cynical these days?

Pennsylvania: But, and I mean this without any sarcasm whatsoever- truly open government can be a real pain for those in power. So it seems.

Tennessee: The state legislature is playing games with open records. Why is everyone so cynical these days?

Texas: I love blogs! Local accountability! No one is denying that the closed session degenerated into shrieks that could be heard down the hall.

More Texas (it’s a big state): Lubbuck city councilman Todd Klein told to file an open records request if he wants to know what is going on with a project Lubbock is funding. But our friendly local blogger has little sympathy, saying welcome to the crowd.

Federal FOIA: The FOIA drop-box idea.

Keep those FOIA posts coming. How else will we know about the closed sessions generating into shrieks, the city council members who have to file FOIAs to get information for their own city, and so much else? It’s a rich tapestry that tells the endlessly interesting story of people whose parents never told them that you can’t fight city hall.

The big news in open records circles today is that a lawsuit has been launched against the Republican Governor of Missouri, Matt Blunt, alleging that his top aides ordered staffers “to break the law by destroying copies of government e-mails so they wouldn’t ever become public”.

The lawsuit is civil; the plaintiff is an independent investigative team set up by Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon.

It’s been a bad few weeks for statewide constitutional officers in the e-mail department. In stories we’ve been covering, Democratic Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann seems to be on the verge of being forced out of office because of e-mail woes.

North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley was in trouble earlier this week because of something that sounds extremely similar to what Blunt’s office did in Missouri, but that story has been chased off the front page by yet another exciting and thrilling event in our nation’s long walk to November: The Pansy Remark, which at last count had been mentioned in 3,932 online news articles, about 3,922 more than have mentioned the e-mail problem.

See other governors and their e-mail woes or triumphs.

Update: Another charming and confidence-inspiring open records action from a governor, this time Chet Culver of Iowa, who wants state agencies to start charging to have government lawyers review documents requested under Iowa’s open-records law.

Overall consensus of candidates: Judges’ e-mails fair game.

There’s a lively dispute in West Virginia about whether e-mails of judges–especially West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Elliott “Spike” Maynard–should be subject to FOIA. The Associated Press is pushing the issue via a lawsuit after initial denials from Maynard’s office.

This calls to mind what Thomas Moyer, Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court said back in February. What Judge Moyer said a few short months ago is that that the Ohio judiciary is not now, and never has been, subject to Ohio’s laws governing access to public documents.

Helium is pairing up with Sunshine Week to offer Sunshine Week Citizen Journalism Awards:

“This is your opportunity to think like a journalist and write about open government issues. Help raise awareness about the importance of government transparency by writing unique, compelling articles. You could be recognized as a Sunshine Week Citizen Journalist and become eligible for the grand prize awarded during Sunshine Week 2009.”

The question for the first month’s competition is, “Are candidates missing an opportunity to connect with voters on open government issues?”

(Yes.)

While the Sunshine Week Citizen Journalist Award is not yet as extraordinarily prestigious and coveted as the STOTW Award, it is well worth the time and attention of FOIA writers. Have at it. Anyone can sign up for a Helium account and start writing.

Sunshine Week also has a blog.

Meet Stephen Whitaker, our 23rd Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week. Mr. Whitaker lives in Greenwich, Connecticut. He is the 2nd Connecticut resident to win this coveted and increasingly prestigious award, joining Andy Thibault..

Whitaker is a computer consultant. In 2001, he sought access to the geographic information system, a municipal database with aerial photos and property information, of Greenwich. His request was denied by the town but later upheld by the Connecticut Supreme Court.

(To be an STOTW, it helps to appeal a denial all the way to your state’s Supreme Court. And win, although winning is certainly neither necessary nor frequent.)

The City of Greenwich has been parsimonious about giving Mr. Whitaker the updates he has requested to the database, says the local newspaper.

As a result, Mr. Whitaker has filed complaints with the state’s freedom of information council. One of those complaints resulted in the state FOIC group levying a $100 fine against Jim Lash, a former member of the town’s governing body. The fine was against Lash as an individual, because the state board thought he was being “disingenuous” in his explanations about denying or slowly providing records to Whitaker.

Greenwich is now appealing that $100 fine on behalf of Mr. Lash. Mr. Lash has also questioned Whitaker’s motives, wondering why Whitaker wants the information he wants and saying:

“Mr. Whitaker has cost the town a very large amount of money for no obvious reason”.

A few thoughts from us:

Welcome, Mr. Whitaker, and congratulations.

In Manatee County, Florida, the school board is looking at deleting $21 million from the school district’s 2008-09 budget. They asked each principal to submit proposed budgets showing where the cuts would come from. As they said prior to April 7:

“All of the information in administrators’ hands has been included on our Web site and our employees and the public has been invited to review and make suggestions.”

But, as of April 18, no such proposals had appeared on the website.

As reported in School Stonewalling, the local newspaper, the Bradenton Herald asked–three times–for the budget cut outlines. When the school district finally handed over the documents on April 18, school administrators said the documents were no longer relevant because the district had already worked things out–obviously, with no public input, since the public didn’t have any idea what was going on. As the paper said,

“We have to wonder if district officials do not want any member of the public - be they teachers, staff, citizen watchdogs or the press - to read some documents for fear of real open discussions on issues before top school officials predetermine and then release their own plan, carved in stone.”

Meanwhile, the school board has scheduled a workshop to review its policy on public records.

In North Carolina, it turns out that three members of Gov. Easley’s staff regularly deleted their e-mails. The e-mails that they deleted might be important public records.

Last month, Gov. Easley told the News & Observer that although these staff members “thought” they had been told by Renee Hoffman, the governor’s press secretary, to destroy these public records, that Thank Goodness, none of them actually did. Or, as he put it,

“The good news is, in spite of all that, they all kept their stuff like they were supposed to. They all followed the [correct] policy.”

The newspaper came to believe that this wasn’t the case, and that potentially important e-mails had been deleted:

The News & Observer has filed a lawsuit against the administration; Andrew Vanore, the governor’s counsel, is looking forward to waging a vigorous defense paid for by the taxpayers of North Carolina.