The Obama administration said Friday it will apply the legal provisions of the Freedom of Information Act to determine what parts of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s official emails when she was secretary of state will be released publicly from her private account. The law contains nine exemptions to censor or withhold parts of records.
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Until last summer, police in Connecticut had to provide information about arrests or prove why that information should not be public. But a state Supreme Court ruling in July turned that bedrock principle upside down.
The court basically gave police full power to withhold much detail about arrests until the case is closed, which could take years. The remedy, the court wrote, is legislative and up to the General Assembly.
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Read More… from Support bill to restore public right to arrest details
Top Virginia officials frequently rely on an alternative to one of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s alleged methods of secrecy: Rather than use private emails, governors, university presidents and others hide behind state law.
The former secretary of state and presumptive Democratic presidential front-runner stepped into a thicket last week over her use of a private account to conduct official business. If she were the elected leader of Virginia or the top executive at one of the state’s public universities, it wouldn’t have mattered.
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Read More… from Broad reach of Virginia’s ‘working papers’ exemption unique among open records laws
The types of transparency questions surrounding Hillary Rodham Clinton's use of personal email to conduct business while secretary of state have led in recent years to access fights in state capitals throughout the country.
Governors and other elected officials routinely use private emails, laptops and cellphones for government business, a popular strategy that sometimes helps them avoid public scrutiny of their actions.
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Read More… from Private Email Use a Source of Friction in Many Statehouses
In August 2012, the conservative watchdog group Landmark Legal Foundation made a Freedom of Information Act request for records at the Environmental Protection Agency — specifically seeking records of any efforts to slow down the issue of new regulations until after the 2012 election.
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Hillary Clinton has said she wants the public to see 55,000 e-mails she turned over to the State Department that had been kept in her personal, unofficial e-mail account. But nobody should hold their breath waiting to see them. That’s because the State Department is legendary for taking forever to wade through and ultimately decide what documents can be released when.
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It’s already been deemed the “Worst Bill of 2015,” and has united in opposition forces on the left, right and center who normally can’t agree on what color the sky is.
An editorial Wednesday morning in the Las Vegas Review-Journal described the bill:
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Read More… from Government agencies’ attempt to ‘clarify’ open records laws meets resistance
Automatically deleting email after 90 days could lead to the accidental disposal of important records, the head of New York's Committee on Open Government told Capital, as the Cuomo administration presses ahead with its controversial new policy.
Robert Freeman, who has worked for the committee since it was founded in 1974, said there shouldn't be a fixed time governing when records are saved or discarded.
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Read More… from Open government leader warns against email deletion policy
They routinely attract little public attention or news coverage. Yet last week's meeting of aides to the governor and Cabinet illustrates the importance of Florida's public meetings law. Only by requiring that the public's business be conducted in public can Floridians know what elected officials are up to and assess the potential impact.
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Read More… from Editorial: A lesson in open government in Florida
The Washington State Archives has announced a series of open government training workshops throughout Washington in March in support of a state law that was introduced by the Washington State Attorney General‘s Office and passed in 2014.
The Open Government Trainings Act requires training for public officials, public disclosure officers and state-appointed records officers.
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Read More… from Open government training workshops scheduled for March | Secretary of State
