A federal judge Monday blasted the Environmental Protection Agency for its “suspicious” handling of a 2012 Freedom of Information Act request by a conservative group for top officials’ e-mails, saying the agency left “far too much room” for the public to suspect official misconduct.
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Read More… from Judge blasts EPA for ‘suspicious’ handling of conservative group’s FOIA
A state lawmaker says it’s time to subject the governor’s office and the Legislature to Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). State Rep. Brandon Dillon (D-Grand Rapids) says he’ll introduced the bill soon.
“It just didn’t seem to make any sense to continue to allow the governor’s office to not be subject to the same laws as everybody else,” he says. “So in this version of the bill, both the Legislature and the governor would be subject to FOIA.”
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Read More… from Bill Would Subject Governor, Legislature to Freedom of Information Act
Iowa District Court Judge Stuart Werling ruled Thursday in favor of Davenport in a Freedom of Information Act case.
Judge Werling said the city "substantially complied" with requests by Dr. Allen Diercks and Patricia Lane for public records related to work done by the accounting firm Deloitte and Touche LLC, from Dec. 12, 2012 to March 8, 2013.
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Read More… from Judge rules in favor of Davenport in open records case
Gov. Susana Martinez has agreed to release monthly reports that detail the spending of security officers who travel with her, part of an agreement reached with The Associated Press in a public records case.
Under the settlement, the governor's attorneys agreed that the information in the procurement card reports relates to public business and falls under New Mexico's Inspection of Public Records Act.
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Read More… from AP, New Mexico governor reach settlement over access to public records
Taser International, the stun-gun maker emerging as a leading supplier of body cameras for police, has cultivated financial ties to police chiefs whose departments have bought the recording devices, raising a host of conflict-of-interest questions.
A review of records and interviews by The Associated Press show Taser is covering airfare and hotel stays for police chiefs who speak at promotional conferences. It is also hiring recently retired chiefs as consultants, sometimes just months after their cities signed contracts with Taser.
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Read More… from Body-camera maker has financial ties to police chiefs
The Beecher School District paid nearly $250,000 to avoid two lawsuits over alleged sexual misconduct by a former public school administrator.
But no lawsuit was ever filed, so taxpayers did not have easy access to this information because of a state law that allows public bodies to enter into non-disclosure clauses that bar either side from discussing specifics of a case.
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When Congress last updated federal open government laws in 2007, it created a new ombudsman intended to serve as an honest broker between Freedom of Information Act requestors and agencies. But unlike most other ombudsmen, this one works for one of the parties in the disputes it's supposed to mediate. Pending legislation would change that by making the Office of Government Information services (OGIS) truly independent from the executive branch.
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Read More… from Lawmakers’ latest FOIA reform effort would strengthen governmentwide ombudsman
Some lawmakers in Springfield are again trying to make government less transparent.
State Rep. Joe Sosnowski, a Republican from Rockford, has filed House Bill 261. If passed, it will end the publication of all public notices in newspapers in favor of government websites. The legislation states that when a law, court order, or contract requires a governmental unit to provide notice by publication in a newspaper, that governmental unit may publish the notice on an official government website instead of in a newspaper.
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Read More… from Editorial: Proposed law would lessen Illinois governmental transparency
A formal opinion from Attorney General Leslie Rutledge today says that most of former state treasurer employee Sam Swayze's records should be released as the office custodian of records intended to do.
Swayze is Treasurer Dennis Milligan's first cousin. He was hired despite a state law prohibiting Milligan from hiring his first cousin. Milligan has said he didn't know of the law and dismissed Swayze from his $63,000 job after learning it was illegal. Freedom of Information Act requests were made for Swayze's personnel records. Swayze objected.
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Read More… from Attorney general okays release of former treasurer employee’s records
Years after one of its researchers published studies linking mountaintop mining to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses, West Virginia University must defend its refusal to release thousands of documents pertaining to the studies a mining company requested under the Freedom of Information Act.
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