The Post and Courier routinely uses the S.C. Freedom of Information Act to unearth crucial documentation for the benefit of all sorts of South Carolinians. The law is a principal method for holding the powerful accountable and shining a light on happenings that would otherwise remain in darkness.
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Read More… from Sunshine Week: How FOIA has brought light to key issues in South Carolina
The New England First Amendment Coalition will join open government advocates throughout the country to celebrate this 12th annual Sunshine Week.
Sunshine Week, from March 12-18, is a national campaign to promote dialogue about the importance of transparency and freedom of information. Participants include news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools and others interested in the public’s right to know.
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Read More… from NEFAC, Media and FOI Advocates to Celebrate Sunshine Week, Open Government
By Daniel Bevarly, Executive Director, NFOIC
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Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear will intervene in a lawsuit between Western Kentucky University and its student newspaper, the College Heights Herald, over an open records request into the university’s sexual misconduct investigations.
“We are seeing an all too familiar pattern by our public universities to stifle transparency related to public records of faculty potential involvement in cases of sexual assault,” Beshear said in a news release Wednesday.
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Read More… from Kentucky AG Beshear will intervene in WKU open records lawsuit
The House Competitiveness Committee is expected to act Thursday on bills expanding public records acts to the governor's office and legislature under new, tightened language.
Michigan is one of two states that currently does not subject the legislature or governor to its open records laws, which helped the it earn the bottom spot on a 2015 ranking of transparency among the states.
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Read More… from Michigan FOIA expansion bills tweaked in committee
Celebrating Sunshine Week 2017, the National Press Club Journalism Institute’s Freedom of the Press Committee will join with the D.C. Open Government Coalition to present the sixth annual D.C. Open Government Summit on March 14 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
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Read More… from DC Open Government Summit and Reception at National Press Club
Data from the Prince George’s County government became easier to access this week after the county relaunched a website that gives the public the power to probe, download and search data sets about everything from building permits to crime.
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Read More… from Md.: Open data portal encourages residents to analyze their government
A bill that attempts to flush out serial abusers of Florida’s public records law was tightened Monday to appeal to Sunshine Law advocates, but the groups said the changes don’t go far enough to protect the public.
The bill, SB 80 by Sen. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, would give judges more discretion in deciding whether or not to award attorneys fees in public-records lawsuits.
“What I’m trying to do here is reach some kind of compromise,” he said.
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Read More… from Fl.: Senate advances bill to weaken citizens’ leverage in public records disputes
President Donald Trump's repeal of an anti-corruption rule that required extractive industries — like mining, oil drilling and quarrying — to disclose payments to foreign governments has caused dismay among people who advocate for the poor and for transparency in government.
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Peggy Scott held up a bankers box that can hold about 2,750 sheets of paper. Then she held up a small 512-gigabyte flash drive that costs about $20 and holds nearly 10,000 pages of documents, and a picture of a 5 terabyte external hard drive, which costs about $120.
“Government agencies used to have to stores these [boxes] in basements and rent out spaces,” Scott said. “[The hard drive] would hold half the print collection of the Library of Congress.”
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