The people who really need the Freedom of Information Act are members of the general public — you and me. The so-called "average Joes."
When dealing with a reluctant official unwilling to hand out information about the functioning of government, it is the FOIA that spells out what information should be available to the general public and how it should be turned over.
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Read More… from Editorial: Gov. signs bill to hold down FOIA costs
Last week, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law changes to the Freedom of Information Act. That’s the law that allows people to access government records — everything from how much the mayor makes to police reports to information on your local school district.
Any Freedom of Information Act request — or FIOA — comes with a cost. Whoever files the request has to pay for the time it takes the government agency to gather the information and the cost to get it to them.
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Read More… from New law in Michigan keeps FOIA requests cheap
It’s show time again in Springfield, and the supporting cast is the same as last year — more than a hundred Democrats who maintain veto-proof majorities in the House and Senate.
But there’s a new star, Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, who enters stage left with a fresh script that promises to replace “business as usual” with fiscal and ethical reform.
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Following a 2014 decision concerning the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the S.C. Supreme Court, exempting autopsy results from the information available to the public, Sen. Larry Martin is looking to change legislation.
Martin, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, will also be chair of a subcommittee that will be debating a change to the legislation of record, putting in place measures to insure “the public’s right to information,” albeit with some restrictions applied to protect the privacy of individuals.
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Visit a municipal clerk's office and you will likely hear griping about the Open Public Records Act.
"We hate OPRAs here," a Kearny clerk's office employee muttered to a reporter for The Jersey Journal picking up a request for a list of all town salaries.
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Read More… from Companies hijacking state’s Open Public Records Act for profit, municipal clerks say
All North Carolinians deserve to know when their local governments hold special meetings or plan public hearings. State lawmakers have a unique opportunity this year to preserve that right and save cities and counties some money in the process.
When the 2015 regular session begins Wednesday, Rep. Marilyn Avila, R-Wake, plans to introduce a compromise bill that will keep public notice requirements in place and limit the fees newspapers charge to publish the announcements. The bill is modeled after legislation passed in Florida and Tennessee.
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2015 should be the year for open data in California. A new crop of state lawmakers and constitutional officers, combined with activity underway in state and local governments, are pushing California closer to a “tipping point” where the demand and use of data can truly transform the public sector.
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Tazewell County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Hal Harper has spent every workday for the last two months dealing with Freedom of Information Act requests from a convicted murderer.
Harper, who started two months ago as one of the department’s Freedom Of Information Act officers, said that Daniel Cleary recently sent a request for 2,500 pages of documents and a DVD of his police interrogations.
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Read More… from FOIA change targets nuisance requests in Illinois
The Associated Press announced Thursday it will create “a team of state government specialists” in an effort to bolster coverage of statehouses across America.
The new team will “be a resource to our statehouse reporters looking for help broadening the scope of their reporting,” Brian Carovillano, AP’s managing editor for U.S. news, wrote in a brief Q and A accompanying the announcement. They will also work with a projects team that will turn out “ambitious enterprise” journalism on state government.
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Read More… from The AP creates team of statehouse reporting specialists
HB 3796 will help ease the burden on public bodies when responding to large Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and will allow requesters to be directed to websites for information already posted online.
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