More than a month ago, the Democrat and Chronicle filed what seemed like a simple records request with the city of Rochester. The newspaper asked for records of ticket sales, concessions and team contracts (read: leases) that would spell out revenue sharing and use terms for Blue Cross Arena at the Community War Memorial.
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Read More… from Governments aren’t the only ones who keep agency records
Carolina Public Press is pleased to announce that it is working to launch a regional open government, data and records project called Open WNC.
The project is made possible in part through a recent $10,000 OpenGov grant to Carolina Public Press from the Sunlight Foundation, which supports “open-source projects and tools [that] are opening up data and government information in innovative ways.” The project was one of eight efforts across the country to recently earn funding from the foundation.
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Read More… from CPP launching Open WNC, a regional open government, data project
Four senators have filed papers with a federal appeals court urging judges to force the government to divulge more about the rules it follows when it makes U.S. citizens the target of anti-terror drone strikes.
The filing Wednesday with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan supported arguments made in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
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Read More… from US senators urge NY court to make drone killing memos public
Bureaucratic stonewalling erects barriers to the public’s right to know. It also undermines our system of checks and balances and weakens the public’s trust in our institutions of government.
Let’s remember the genesis of our republic. The government works for the people, not the other way around. Foot-dragging subverts transparency and creates a credibility gap.
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Read More… from Opinion: Freedom of Information Act Protects the Public Interest
A new law that was signed by Gov. Rick Snyder in January will ensure local governments cannot charge excessive fees for requests under the state’s Freedom of Information Act.
The bill, which was introduced by Michigan Sen. Mike Shirkey, limits the per-page amount a municipality or other public body can charge for documents requested under the act, or FOIA, to 10 cents.
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Read More… from State streamlines Freedom of Information Act requests
The Freedom of Information Act, first enacted in 1966, allows the public to see how their government functions — and fails to function — by providing access to official records. In fiscal year 2013, government agencies released some or all of the information sought in 440,997 requests.
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Read More… from Editorial: Upgrade to Freedom of Information Act is a good start
Three Southern California civil rights organizations filed a lawsuit Tuesday against two federal agencies, the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection, claiming they are wrongly withholding information that should be publicly available.
They are requesting information about a Border Patrol practice known as roving patrols, in which agents conduct searches of people and vehicles away from the border and away from checkpoints in the country’s interior.
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Illinois Treasurer Mike Frerichs (FRAYR'-ikz) waited four days last month for Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office to declare that he should keep a taxpayer-funded report about sexual harassment allegations against his predecessor under wraps.
The Associated Press and other news organizations had been waiting 10 months for the same decision.
Madigan's office says the attorney general does not play favorites and blames the delay on a backlog.
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Read More… from Illinois treasurer gets FOIA advice in 4 days, not months
A bipartisan group of senators filed a brief late last night in federal appeals court in support of the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times’ lawsuits seeking Justice Department legal memos on U.S. targeted killing operations.
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Read More… from Senators From Both Parties Back ACLU, New York Times in FOIA Lawsuit for Drone Memos
When Maryland adopted its public information policy 45 years ago, email hadn't been invented yet, commercial laser printers were being refined for the market and the ink on the federal Freedom of Information Act was barely dry.
On Tuesday open government advocates began their push to update the Maryland Public Information Act of 1970.
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