People seeking to request open records from state agencies can now go online to do so.
State administrators opened the Open Records Portal at http://openrecords.utah.gov last week in an effort to make it easier for residents to identify which agency is responsible for which records and to submit a request.
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Read More… from New online portal makes open-records requests easier
The city of Boston lets citizens track its spending online. In Oakland, public records requests are posted on the city's website.
Government tools like these may be coming to San Diego. Local officials are pushing policy to open more of the city's information to the public.
Ben Katz of Open San Diego said identifying and releasing city records in a format San Diegans can use is crucial. Continue>>>
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Read More… from New San Diego Data Chief Wants To Get Government Records In Public’s Hands
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting via Columbia Journalism Review:
The nonprofit Citizens Awareness Foundation was founded to “empower citizens to exercise their right to know,” according to its mission statement. The South Florida millionaire backing the foundation hired one of the state’s most prominent public records activists to run it, rented office space, and pledged to pay the legal fees to make sure people had access to government records.
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Read More… from Florida’s frequent FOIA flyers, and their law firm connection
On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, late in the day, two veteran Tallahassee reporters finally received important public records from the office of Gov. Rick Scott. They had had requested the records, emails, more than three months prior, many weeks before Scott won a narrow re-election victory over former Gov. Charlie Crist.
While candidates might prefer to control the timing of a damaging news report — say, until after an election — Florida law doesn’t provide for that level of control where the release of public records are concerned.
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Read More… from Opinion: Is a three-month delay for public records really ‘open government?’
Controversial professor Steven Salaita, whose job offer at the University of Illinois was rescinded after he made anti-Israel comments on social media, filed a lawsuit Monday alleging that the university has violated the state's open records law.
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Read More… from Steven Salaita files lawsuit against the University of Illinois
Since 2010, the North Dakota University System has violated state open records and open meetings laws 17 times, according to records from the North Dakota Attorney General's office. Now Interim Chancellor Larry Skogen is crying foul on some of those requests, saying they're politically motivated.
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Read More… from ND University chancellor calls open records requests ‘politically motivated’
It isn't uncommon for conflicts to arise between the news media and law enforcement agencies over the release of information.
Police are protective of their investigations and worry about showing too much of their hand. News reporters are hard-core advocates of the public's right to know and question anything that stands in the way of gathering information freely. As standoffish as the two groups can sometimes be, there's also a reliance on each other. There are times one can benefit from the other.
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Read More… from Freedom of information and police don’t always mix
A privacy activist is suing the Chicago Police Department after officials denied his Freedom of Information Act request seeking departmental records regarding cell phone data collection.
Southwest Side resident Freddy Martinez filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Cook County Circuit Court. The suit claims the police department “has willfully and intentionally violated FOIA by refusing to produce records that would show the full extent to which it has secretly used 'IMSI catcher' or 'stingray' equipment.”
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Read More… from Suit: CPD refused to turn over cell phone data collection records
Steve Toth has lived his entire life in southwest Detroit, and his family home is among those expected to be demolished to make way for a new public bridge to Canada pushed by Gov. Rick Snyder.
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Read More… from Governor, lawmakers off limits under public records law
Despite having a new criminal subpoena in hand, Gov. Pat Quinn's administration dragged its feet in releasing the politically-sensitive public document — a delay one expert called a gaming of the state open-records laws that 'stinks'.
On Tuesday, the governor's office finally released the federal grand jury subpoena dated Aug. 27 that sought records related to Quinn's failed Neighborhood Recovery Initiative anti-violence program, but it did so only selectively.
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Read More… from Expert: IL Gov. Quinn’s handling of request to release subpoena ‘stinks’
