We don’t have those records

Rick Tomlinson of the Greater Pennsylvania Regional Council of Carpenters asked the Clearfield County commissioners for “all the certified payroll documents” related to the county’s Bionol Ethanol Clearfield Plant. The plant was built with $14 million in state grant funds.

The county denied the request saying they don’t have the records, so they can’t provide them.

In Clearfield, quandary over payroll records.

If the union (the Regional Council of Carpenters) has the money to sue over this question, I predict they will win. We had a case on a somewhat similar situation in Wisconsin last year, WIREData v. Village of Sussex.

A “private agency” FOIA case in Kansas

Bob Weeks of Wichita Liberty is taking the Wichita Downtown Development Corporation to task because the agency refused to honor his Kansas Sunshine Law request on the grounds that they are not a public agency.

Although the agency may be clumsily backing down, this case should help Kansans better understand the nature of these nominally private agencies that dot the municipal landscape.

Originally, the agency said, “The WDDC is a non-profit organization. Such entities do not become subject to the KORA merely by the receipt of some of their funding from the City, which is used to pay for services from the WDDC.”

Although the agency says they get “some of their funding” from the city, Weeks points out that virtually all of their money comes from taxes. He writes, “The WDDC is wholly supported by a special property tax district. Its only other income listed on its IRS form 990 for 2008 is a small amount of interest income, presumably from investment of unspent funds.”

The Kansas open records law doesn’t actually distinguish between “some” or “all” when it comes to whether agencies like this are subject to its provisions. What the law says is:

‘Public agency’ means the state or any political or taxing subdivision of the state or any office, officer, agency or instrumentality thereof, or any other entity receiving or expending and supported in whole or in part by the public funds appropriated by the state or by public funds of any political or taxing subdivision of the state.

See also:

Private agency, public dollars.

What is this “no-bid contract” of which you speak?

Speaking of technological advances, it cost the taxpayers of Beaver County, Pennsylvania about $2.8 million because they sold bonds without getting competitive bids.

But perhaps the county commissioners of Beaver County, Pennsylvania were unusually ignorant of the fact that different financial companies, um, charge different rates for their work?

No. According to Bloomberg, “More than 85 percent of the $308.9 billion in new tax- exempt bond issues this year were sold without competitive bidding.”

Technological advances ease e-mail filtering

FOIA headache cured at Howell describes how different approaches to e-mail retention and search can make the process of recovering FOIA-responsive e-mails less time-consuming.

Whew! That’s a relief

A state official told public information officers from three counties on Friday the Maryland Public Information Act is meant to help, and not hinder, the public’s access to documents.

Meet Josh Meyer

We’ve had some changes at the Lucy Burns Institute this year. Sara Key, who came up with the idea for WikiFOIA and edited it for two years, is now focusing on Judgepedia.

We’ve been very lucky to find Joshua Meyer as a staff writer at WikiFOIA. Josh has been re-vamping our articles on the various state sunshine laws and right now is drilling down into court cases with an impact on state FOIA laws and practice.

Ohio man fined for filing a sunshine lawsuit

Ohio man fined.

Brian Bardwell of “Citizens for Sunshine” has been fined by the Eighth Ohio District Court of Appeals. The court said that a lawsuit Bardwell filed when he didn’t get records he requested was filed in “bad faith”.

A 3-judge panel on the court also warned Bardwell that if he keeps filing lawsuits based on the Ohio Sunshine Law, they might bar him from doing so in the future.

Strange. Bardwell has filed 19 lawsuits against government bodies in Ohio, and he has won a number of those lawsuits. So it’s not clear to me why an Ohio court would want to inhibit Bardwell’s work, since Bardwell’s lawsuit-filing services seem to be a vital part of keeping these local governments in line with the state’s sunshine law.

Bardwell says, “It’s important to make sure the government is operating out in the open, especially in Cuyahoga County. Somebody’s got to do that work.”

See also:

Court finds records-request suit ‘in bad faith,’ orders payment.

Congratulations to Sam Adams Alliance and Tulsa and Maury counties

The Sam Adams Alliance was awarded the 2009 Templeton Innovative Media Award (which comes with a $10K check) for its project, Sunshine Review.

Sunshine Review, in turn, has been handing out kudos to counties like Tulsa County, Oklahoma, which is scoring an A+. Admittedly, in Oklahoma, it would not be hard to stand out in the county-website department, inasmuch as most counties in Oklahoma do no have websites at all. But Tulsa’s A+ is an absolute grade, not a grade on the curve, because its new web re-design complies with every item on the county website checklist.

Maury County in Tennessee has said recently that it has been inspired by the Sunshine Review checklist to put more information on its website.

Access to state court records

I’ve started an article on access to state court records on Judgepedia. There’s a loooong way to go on it. If you’re familiar with this area, I’d appreciate any help you can give.

On this subject, the Tulsa World is reporting today that the Oklahoma Supreme Court has adopted a new rule prohibiting “distribution of all or a significant subset of electronic case information”.

Oklahoma Supreme Court justice James Edmondson is justifying the new rule apparently solely on the grounds of a large request it received. Edmondson says of that request: “We determined that we did not have a specific rule to determine how to handle this request, which could have cost the (requester) an estimated $20,000 to $40,000 to have the request filled.”

So? Why does the fact that a group that apparently had a commercial motivation in wanting many records would have had to pay a lot for them mean that the Oklahoma Supreme Court needs to shut down or wall off records like this?

What happens when gov’ts put their checkbook registers online?

Terrible, terrible things. Just don’t do it; it leads to nothing but aggravation.

See also:

A review of the “checkbook register online” movement.