May 2008

• Ah, the useful information that open records can show us: Evaluations show change of board's opinion toward ex-superintendent. May 29, 2008
• New Jersey's Government Records Council, created to enforce the Open Public Records Act, has a tough time providing access to its own records. May 27, 2008
• State schools inconsistent going public with records.
  "In the end it comes down to a battle of the public's perceived right to know and the university's perceived right to protect itself." May 25, 2008
• New York is on to a great idea: open, vendor neutral, and interoperable software systems for public records. May 23, 2008
• 6 years after LGBT activists succeeded in getting an ordinance passed, no one knows if it works or not. Guess why no one knows! Yep, it's because the city is refusing to comply with open records requests. May 22, 2008
• Is this a joke?
  "Because of a glitch in the wording of an amendment, the House voted Wednesday to maintain the Louisiana governor's wide exception to open records law". Um, isn't that the bill meant to do the very opposite? May 22, 2008
• Many states allow the custodians of public documents to charge a fee for costs related to fulfilling an open records request (for example, copying to paper, copying to CD, retrieving the document, etc.). One thing that NO states allow public record fees to be applied to is new office equipment. May 21, 2008
• The University of Hawaii's athletic department made one expensive trip. Under pressure from the media, the university is now trying to recoup it's costs from the staff. May 21, 2008
• The Washington State Auditor has been performing an audit of how various governmental agencies respond to requests for public records. The results have just been released - see them and some commentary on the audit here. May 19, 2008
• The New Jersey Star Ledger used open records to put together a nice report on how the Department of Corrections polices itself. May 18, 2008
• Military IDs to list only last four digits of SSNs, May 18, 2008
• John Gavin has begun posting all the SEC-related communications he has received via FOIA. May 16, 2008
• Some thoughts on just how many records really need to be stored for the public: Let state keep the needle, not the haystack. May 14, 2008
• The Student Press Law Center issued this press release to the US Department of Education, urging that FERPA laws not be expanded to invalidate open records laws at the state level, May 12, 2008.
• A parent in Colorado is upset that he is not being permitted to view footage taken on the school bus of a fight his child was in. May 12, 2008
• Information That Doesn’t Come Freely, May 11, 2008
• A Virginia school superintendent has given up spending taxpayer dollars to keep public records out of the hands of the public. May 11, 2008
• Charlotte city attorney Mac McCarley has a laundry list of people he thinks should not be making public record requests:
  "Disgruntled, unsuccessful bidders wanting to know everything about a bid process and the other people in it, bloggers wanting information for their shots at the government, the alternative press who has no particular sense of reasonableness in what they ask for, the gadflies and the Libertarians who will admit to you they are looking to bog down government, potential litigants shopping for a claim, political opponents of current officials, and then the idly curious." May 10, 2008
• Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is starting to give up the ghost. May 9, 2008
• Some great advice from the American School Board Journal. May 8, 2008
• Cleveland Council blames old computer system for Joe Santiago's deleted e-mails.
  "Horse hockey" says Tim Smith, a Kent State University professor who teaches open-records law. May 8, 2008
• Shouldn't the records of those who work closely with minors be open to review by the public? May 7, 2008
• Trouble in Missouri: Lawsuit contends Blunt's aides ordered staffers to break the law. May 6, 2008
• The court of appeals ruled that employees' right to be free of harassment from the news media and the public outweighs any benefit in re-examining an incident where two firefighters died in California. May 2, 2008
• What to do when the need for public records outstrips storage capacity? Well, Arizona managed to figure out a solution. May 1, 2008

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