A few state FOIA and local open government news items selected from many of interest that we might or might not have drawn attention to earlier in the week:
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Read More… from NFOIC’s State FOIA Friday for November 30, 2012
From The Associated Press:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama signed legislation Tuesday that affords greater protection to federal employees who expose fraud, waste and abuse in government operations.
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Read More… from President signs whistle-blower bill for U.S. workers
From The Freedom Foundation:
OLYMPIA (Nov 28, 2012) – The Freedom Foundation today released Best Practices for Public Agency Compliance with the Open Public Meetings Act, a go-to source of information on a number of issues related to Washington State’s Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA).
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Read More… from Freedom Foundation releases best practices for Open Public Meetings Act
From The Texas Tribune:
Whether Texas' open records law should address “frivolous and overly burdensome” public information requests was among the topics discussed Monday at a state Senate panel hearing.
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Read More… from Senate committee hears testimony on Texas Open Records Law
From MyCentralJersey.com:
MANVILLE (Nov 26, 2012) — What are they trying to hide?
That’s a question libertarian activist John Paff says he is trying to get answered through a lawsuit he filed last week in state Superior Court.
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Read More… from Manville police sued by activist over access to investigation records
From MySanAntonio.com:
AUSTIN (Nov 26, 2012) — The state's 40-year-old law designed to keep government in the open needs a few tweaks to catch up with modern technology, open government advocates told a Texas Senate committee Monday.
The law should clarify, for example, that emails and text messages that public officials send from private accounts must be open for public review if the content is in any way related to public business.
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From Courthouse News Service:
DETROIT (Nov 27, 2012) – Wayne State University is exempt from answering a FOIA request about its use of dogs in medical research, because the last time it did “animal rights extremists” threatened its researchers with “torture and death,” the university claims in court.
The university sued the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, in Wayne County Court.
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Read More… from College alarmed by animal rights ‘extremists’
From The Republic:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The state Court of Appeals is again taking up a public records case involving a private prison company and a magazine that advocates for inmate rights.
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From Tulsa World:
A Yukon couple took the rare path of filing an open records lawsuit after their school district refused to turn over records involving an investigation into a school agricultural program.
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Read More… from Enforcing Oklahoma’s Open Records Act is largely left to average citizens
