Open Records

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

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.

Kent Fiscal Watch has started a tremendously useful local website geared toward helping residents of the Town of Kent, in Putnam County, New York, know everything they could possibly want to know about local governments, government budgeting and expenditures, and public records.

Blogs or websites like this are sometimes called “place blogs”, because they intensively cover one particular (usually small) geographic area, allowing information and news to accumulate over time to create a rich historical record and a place for residents to come together and discuss the news of the day–or contribute news, as the case may be.

Here’s a good link I found on the Kent Fiscal Watch Site, Ten Steps to Getting Government Information.

Because I was really getting my hopes up.

If you live in Wisconsin and have watched any television at all the last week, you know that it is an understatement to call the current election contest between Judges Louis Butler and Michael Gableman for Wisconsin Supreme Court “fierce”.  

In this contest, political operatives on both sides have used open records requests with gleeful abandon. In both cases, records were located through FOIA requests that caused at least momentary embarrassment or confusion for their opponent.

In another Wisconsin judicial contest, police officers have complained that Municipal Judge Richard Steinberg has treated them poorly in court, also alleging that citizens in the courtroom complain about the judge. Steinberg used the FOIA process in a clever way–filing an OR request to see any complaints filed against him by ordinary citizens. None had been.

California:

The City of San Jose wants to require its police force to release more documents to the public than the state’s sunshine law requires. As they pursue this objective, a county district attorney has argued that the city can’t go further than state law.

Colorado:

The editorial staff of the Rocky Mountain News argues against a bill proposed in the Colorado house, HB 1082, that would seal from public view criminal records that are ten years old, as long as the perp has maintained a clean record during that time: Don’t Seal Those Records.

Florida

The city of Jackson, Florida, must pay $41,000 in legal fees to the Jackson Sun. The Jackson Sun was forced to go to court to obtain public records that the city willfully and illegally (as determined by a judge) withheld. Pity the taxpayers.

New Jersey

In Hoboken, New Jersey, activist and city council member Beth Mason lost an appeal last week of a judicial ruling that her open records requests were too broad. Mason says that this ruling means that unless a citizen knows the exact title and date of a document, they won’t be able to get it. Mason had sought information about the city’s park plans. The mayor of Hoboken is under the impression that Mason is wasting taxpayer dollars with her requests. Possibly Mason believes that she is attempting to save taxpayer dollars by finding out how the city makes its decisions about parks.

The fact that I have not posted this week so far is because of a succession of small medical events in our family. It’s not because there is no open records/FOIA news to report.

I am scheduled to leave on a vacation tomorrow for a little less than a week, so perhaps I should just plan on keeping up and catching up when I return.

If you live in Wisconsin, happy 5,000th snowstorm.

Online databases where the curious can look at the salary levels of government employees are popping up all over. We’ve added individual pages at WikiFOIA for each of the fifty states to keep track, in each state, of what kind of salary information is made available in that state.

Here’s an example.

Chris Joyner’s First Amendment blog has a new URL.