National Freedom of Information Coalition
Protecting Your Right to Open Government

Author: NFOIC

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Supreme Court takes up healthcare price transparency

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Everyone from President Obama, to GOP presidential hopefuls, to people with high-deductible health insurance have said the more transparency in the pricing of healthcare, the better.

But Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to take up a case that could make it harder to know how much the nation’s largest employers are paying hospitals and doctors for their employee's medical costs.

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Planned Parenthood shooting prompts a question: Why are court records sealed?

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Immediately after last week's attack at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic, many people wanted to know alleged shooter Robert Lewis Dear's motive.

But law enforcement documents, including the arrest and search warrants, that could provide insight into that question were sealed the day of the attack by Judge Stephen Sletta at the request of prosecutors. Continue…

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Judge forces Florida paper to unpublish information

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A judge in Palm Beach County has ordered a Florida newspaper to unpublish material from its website, sparking an outraged response from media lawyers who say the order is a clear First Amendment violation and contrary to established precedent on prior restraint.

Circuit Judge Jack Schramm Cox ordered The Palm Beach Post to remove from its website transcripts of telephone recordings in which a jailhouse snitch bragged about his ability to elicit confessions from fellow inmates and how he had arranged a deal with prosecutors for a lighter sentence.

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First Amendment Foundation announces new Hanna and Douglas Weiss Open Government Legal Fellowship

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Supported by a donation from Kenneth L. Weiss, Esq., the Hanna and Douglas Weiss Open Government Legal Fellowship is a one-semester fellowship for a law student interested in learning about Florida's open government laws and the legislative process.

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D.C. Council to vote on public access to police video

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D.C. police may get the first green light for the proposed body camera program when the D.C. Council takes up compromise legislation allowing public access and lifting many but not all restrictions.

Calling it much improved from the total secrecy plans first proposed by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser in April and the modified ban outlined in September, the D.C. Open Government Coalition on Monday wrote all Council members with praise for the leadership of Judiciary Committee chair Kenyan McDuffie and offering final recommendations.

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Wisconsin DOJ handling open records requests faster, response time down from 2014

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Officials with the Wisconsin Department of Justice say the agency is responding faster to open record requests.

A DOJ news release Tuesday says the agency took an average of 20 days to close a request this year, down from 59 days last year. Since the agency's new Office of Open Government opened in June, the average response time has been 16 days. Continue…

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Connecticut Supreme Court affirms teacher misconduct records are public

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The Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed Monday that records of alleged misconduct by teachers at public schools and universities in the state are public records subject to release under the Freedom of Information Act.

In a unanimous decision by Justice Dennis G. Eveleigh, the state’s highest court rejected an effort by a former University of Connecticut Health Center professor to block the release of a report about allegations he was abusive to staff.

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Ohio treasurer asks charter schools to put finances online

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Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel is cajoling thousands of local governments, public universities, the Ohio pension systems and others to post their expenditures on his government transparency website, OhioCheckbook.com, but until recently he had omitted Ohio’s 395 charter schools – an entire wing of public education that costs taxpayers nearly $1 billion in state funding each year – from his call list.

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Push is on to make police investigation records public in Kansas

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The more than 27-year-old case file on the disappearance of Randy Leach, a Linwood high school honor student, must be thousands of pages.

But it's impossible to know because the Leavenworth County Sheriff's Office and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, who investigated the long-ago mystery, refuse to release the records even to Leach's parents, Harold and Alberta Leach.

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