Good ruling the other day by a New York judge who held that former AG Elliott Spitzer could not shield emails from disclosure under New York's Freedom of Information Law (FOI-L) simply by sending and receiving them on a private email account.
From The New York Post:
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From The Detroit News:
MICHIGAN—Northern Michigan University trustees have called a meeting to discuss whether their selection of interim president David Haynes violated the state's Open Meetings Act.
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Read More… from NMU trustees: Did we break Open Meetings Act?
From Auburnpub.com:
Rick Waldron felt good.
After spending months researching, traveling and bargaining for a new tractor, the longtime Springport highway superintendent believed he had finally ironed out a good deal. So when it was his turn to speak during Springport's monthly meeting on April 9, Waldron stood in front of the town board and detailed his work.
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Read More… from Highway chief: Town board violated open meetings law
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:
Open meeting law needs looser definition
MASSACHUSETTS—At the risk of sounding like a geezer, I want to tell you a little about what it was like reporting on local government before there was such a thing as an open meeting law.
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From Sunlight Foundation:
Two weeks, Florida’s Governor Rick Scott held a press conference, announcing the launch of an ambitious project that will allow online access to much of his email correspondence and that of 11 members of his leadership team. Project Sunburst.
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Read More… from Open government and Florida’s Project Sunburst
From Gartner:
Open government initiatives are either aimed at providing greater transparency, usually as a reaction to an accusation or perception of excessive secrecy, or at engaging citizens in specific problem solution as well as service delivery. It is probably fair to say that the US federal initiatives are closer to the former, while UK initiatives are closer to the latter.
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Read More… from Why Employees Are The Missing Link for Successful Open Government
From GovFresh.com:
Alissa Black joined the New America Foundation in April to lead the newly-formed California Civic Innovation Project, focused on “identifying best practices to improving service delivery, opening new channels for public voices, and bridging the state’s digital divides.”
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From GovLoop.com:
State governments are beginning to focus on website analytics, something we here at GovLoop are very familiar with. They are taking advantage of Google Analytics, a free tool which assesses hits and traffic, to determine how people are utilizing their websites. States like California are even publishing these statistics right on their homepages for people to view.
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Read More… from State governments begin focusing on website analytics
From Code For America:
On Monday April 30, 2012, Oakland City Council reviewed an open data policy initiative put forth by city councilmember of the 4th District and Oakland native, Libby Schaff.
The open data policy agenda report composed by policy analyst Bruce Stoffmacher, proposes to make raw data sets accessible to the public on a new city data portal.
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Read More… from Oakland City Council Votes for Open Data Policy
From iWatchNews:
Iowa’s only F grade on the State Integrity Investigation was in the category of public access to information, partly due to a lack of strong enforcement measures.
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Read More… from Iowa governor cites State Integrity Investigation at bill signing
