SALT LAKE CITY — A physics professor, curious about local political spending, has won his Utah Supreme Court bid to open records from the former Envision Ogden civic group.
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Read More… from Utah: Weber State professor wins bid to open campaign finance records
The administrators of the state court system say they're not the custodians of a collection of case records contained in their computer system, so the state law guaranteeing the public access to government records doesn't apply to them.
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Read More… from Va. Supreme Court secretary responds to FOIA lawsuit
Issues that have been contentious in public about the future of schools in the District seem poised to disappear behind closed doors—including where to put new schools, better sharing of good ideas, reducing student mobility, serving those students not now thriving, and getting better information to families puzzled by the dizzy array of choices. These and more will be on the agenda for a new “Cross-Sector Collaboration Task Force,” according to materials released August 19 by Deputy Mayor for Education, Jennifer Niles.
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Loudon County Mayor Buddy Bradshaw's decision to support proposed legislation that would charge residents to view public records seems at odds with his campaign promise to increase government transparency.
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Read More… from Tennessee: Loudon mayor supports charging for public records; TCOG opposes bill
A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected a lower court ruling that imposed burdensome requirements on a fledgling nonprofit that prevented it from obtaining public-interest or news-media fee waivers under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
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Read More… from DC Circuit Clarifies Public-Interest and News-Media Fee Waivers Under FOIA
North Dakota has very strong transparency laws that make, with few exceptions, just about every government record and meeting completely open to the public. In many ways, North Dakota’s open records and open meetings laws could be a model for other states.
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Read More… from Editorial: Four ways North Dakota could improve its open records laws
The Federal Election Commission has refused to release a cybersecurity report over claims that doing so could expose vulnerabilities in its computer systems.
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Read More… from FEC feuds with open government group over cyber weaknesses
Ask any journalist and they’ll tell you the Freedom of Information Act process is broken. Denials are at record highs, navigating the bureaucracy can be a nightmare, and the federal agencies recently killed a modest reform bill. But a series of FOIA lawsuits also have just shown how the 50-year-old transparency law can still be indispensable. And absent any change in the law, the best way for news organizations to make sure it stays relevant is to use it innovatively and aggressively.
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Read More… from As legacy media cuts back on FOIA, digital-only news outlets step in
Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts sued the Boston Police Department, demanding that they turn over recent years' data on police stops to address concerns that people of color are being overpoliced in the city.
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Read More… from The Key Ingredient in Stop-and-Frisk Reform: Open Data
Twitter has blocked 31 transparency-seeking accounts from accessing its developer API. These accounts all archived and made public the deleted tweets of powerful people like politicians. Twitter’s actually been doing this for a while now.
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Read More… from Twitter Is Shutting Down Even More Government Transparency Accounts
