D.C. Councilmember Anita Bonds, chair of the Committee on Housing and Community Development, announced in a Sept. 29, 2016 committee hearing that Advisory Neighborhood Commissions will not get a blanket exemption from the D.C. Freedom of Information Act.
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Read More… from DCOGC: Blanket FOIA exemption dumped from ANC bill
Immigration attorneys and their clients have settled claims with U.S. Customs and Border Protection over thousands of unanswered Freedom of Information Act requests.
Led by Glendale attorney Meredith Brown, a proposed class of immigration lawyers said that by the end of fiscal year 2013, the agency had a backlog of nearly 38,000 FOIA requests that had been pending for more than the 20 days permitted by the law.
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Read More… from Feds Settle With Immigration Attorneys Over FOIA Backlog
Senior Judge Robert E. Lee Davies ordered Metro Nashville to pay nearly $57K in attorneys fees to a public records requester, saying that the city “misinterpreted and ignored the ‘promptness’ requirement” in the Tennessee Public Records Act.
Davies found the city was willful in not complying with the law, a requirement for awarding attorneys fees in a public records lawsuit.
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Read More… from Metro Nashville must pay nearly $57K in attorneys fees in public records case
In a dramatic turnaround just hours before a hearing on legislation to create a new Metrorail Safety Commission, revisions to the legislation will beef up legal protections for transparency and public access, as advocates had been calling for.
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Read More… from From DCOGC: D.C. Council Drops Secrecy Provisions in Metro Safety Panel
Did the New York Times violate federal law when it published a story about Donald Trump’s 1995 income tax return?
Stories in the Washington Post, Slate and LawNewz.com raise the issue, but all of them report that the First Amendment would likely protect the newspaper.
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Read More… from ABA: Did publication of Donald Trump’s tax return information violate the law?
Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to increase transparency at New York City Hall, but his actions on a number of fronts this year have drawn criticism from government watchdogs and fellow Democrats.
Mr. de Blasio is now involved in two court fights to keep emails under wraps, and his administration has adopted a policy that shields police disciplinary records from the public.
The mayor has also reduced the number of news conferences in which journalists can question him and failed to fulfill a promise to disclose when top officials meet with lobbyists.
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Read More… from Bill de Blasio’s Record on Transparency Brings Criticism
Just last year, Alamo Colleges was lauded by the state comptroller's office for its "financial transparency," winning an award for how easy the community college system supposedly makes it for taxpayers to understand how their money's being spent.
Which is odd considering the $2,340 bill the college system recently sent to a reporter asking for some of the most basic public records, information routinely requested by government watchdogs: taxpayer-funded travel records.
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Read More… from TX: Want Basic Public Records Out of Alamo Colleges? That’ll Be $2,300
AB 2792 originally called for public approval before any police department in the state agrees to hand over inmates to federal immigration officials looking to deport immigrants.
The version signed into law Wednesday removes public approval from the process but makes communications between cops and feds public records. It also calls for public forums if and when law enforcement agencies transfer inmates to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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Read More… from California law adds transparency to process of deporting inmates
Every year, state lawmakers propose revisions to the state Public Records Act, a law passed by initiative in 1972 and amended many times since.
Every year, open-records advocates battle those proposed revisions, with varying degrees of success.
In 2017, the eternal struggle will play out again during the legislative session, but revision-minded lawmakers will have a new weapon to wield: a survey by the Washington state auditor measuring the costs and effects of records requests on state and local governments.
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The investigation by the Reader and Lucy Parsons Labs into the Chicago Police Department's use of civil forfeiture money began with a single, tantalizing detail in a single FOIA'd document.
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Read More… from IL: How the Chicago Reader pulled back the curtain on CPD’s secret spending
