In a March 2021 study of 20 town planning boards in New York State, only 25 percent posted meeting documents online as required by the New York Open Meetings Law. The New York Coalition for Open Government reviewed town websites across the state to determine if meeting documents were posted online before the meeting. The […]
Tag: open meetings
Ensuring open meetings and enhancing police transparency top coalitions’ policy priorities
The National Freedom of Information Coalition, a national 501(c)3 nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, surveyed and questioned its state and local affiliates in the Winter and Spring of 2021 to obtain each affiliate’s top policy priorities and top perceived threats to transparency. The NFOIC released some results of its online survey in its “States of Denial” report, […]
When it Comes to Government Openness, Maryland Is a ‘Backwater’
A government geek who hoped to flip open her laptop and watch the Maryland State Ethics Commission in action on Thursday was in for a disappointment. The panel, which met at 9 a.m. in its office near the State House, has never live-streamed its meetings. Critics say requiring the public to attend board and commission […]
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Kentucky General Assembly ignores its own open meetings law
This, like other serious violations of Kentucky’s open government laws, might have gone unchallenged. Citizens, as well as access advocates have learned to pick their battles. But it is worthy of note when the Kentucky General Assembly ignores a law it enacted in March, 2020, and that it expects all other Kentucky agencies to strictly […]
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Judge’s ruling keeps Texas open meetings lawsuit alive
Judge Bobby Bell denied on Wednesday the Calhoun Port Authority’s latest motion to dismiss a Texas Open Meetings Act case filed by the Victoria Advocate. The newspaper claims the port should have written on the agenda for its May 9 meeting that it was going into closed session to discuss hiring former U.S. Congressman Blake […]
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Lee County (FL) school board opens private meetings to public
The Lee County school board decided Tuesday that it will allow the public to attend meetings that it has been holding in private for more than a year. The board started having the private meetings in April 2017. They were held after the board’s regular meetings in a break room at the Public Education Center. […]
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Montana governments and agencies have to give specifics on who they are protecting when closing meetings
HELENA — Montana’s government bodies and agencies must give some details about whose privacy rights they are protecting when justifying closing a meeting that would otherwise be open to the public, the state Supreme Court ruled. Justices in a 5-0 decision Tuesday said that the Wolf Point School District Board of Trustees’ explanation for closing […]
City of Fort Smith (AR) and school district accused of Open Meeting violations on several occasions in 2017
The city of Fort Smith and the Fort Smith School Board were accused of violating the Freedom of Information Act on more than one occasion this year. In one instance, Sebastian County Circuit Judge Stephen Tabor found the school board to be in violation, calling an email exchange between school board members a “meeting” with […]
Wisconsin Supreme Court wrestles over open meetings law
The Wisconsin Supreme Court wrestled with how broadly to apply the state's open meetings law in a case Wednesday that open government advocates warn could provide a gateway to getting around public access requirements.
The lawsuit was brought by the parent of an Appleton Area School District student who said meetings of a committee charged with reviewing course material for a ninth grade English class should have been open to the public.
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Important open meetings case before Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is to hear arguments in a case that could give school boards and other governmental bodies a way around the open meetings law.
The case up for argument Wednesday focuses on whether meetings of a committee created by employees of the Appleton Area School District to review books for use in a ninth grade class should have been open to the public.
More broadly the court will examine whether committees created in the same way that the one in Appleton was brought together allows them to be exempt from the law.
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