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The FOI ADVOCATEVisit the new FOI ADVOCATE Blog, the official blog of NFOIC, in which we bring news of freedom of information developments. Join us there for FOI advocacy discussions. September 7, 2007 Vol. 5, No. 9The E-Newsletter of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, a unit of the Missouri School of Journalism "A government by secrecy benefits no one. It injures the people it seeks to serve; it damages its own integrity and operation. It breeds distrust, dampens the fervor of its citizens and mocks their loyalty." -- 110 Congressional Record 17, 087 (1964) (Statement of Senator Long) NFOIC NEWSSEND US YOUR STATE’S NEWS at daviscn@missouri.edu. “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
TOP OF THE NEWS“Suppression of information is the surest way to cause its significance to grow and persist. Clarity and openness are the best antidotes, either to dispel criticism if not merited or, if merited, to correct such errors as may be found." NEW CJOG REPORT DETAILS FOIA WOES: A new analysis from the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government documents the steady erosion of federal FOIA. The report notes "current government handling of FOIA requests is deteriorating" across the government agencies. Some highlights:
Additionally, the report notes that the DOJ is "consistently granted the lowest percentage of [FOIA] appeals of any agency — only 4% in 2006." The DOJ's "rate of grant-making is down 70%" than that of President Clinton.
IN THE STATES"It's not the public's meeting. It's the school board's meeting." MAKE SUIT SETTLEMENT PUBLIC: A good-government watchdog says Monmouth County officials are wrong to keep secret the details of a settlement of a lawsuit in which the county traffic engineer alleged that superiors ignored her complaints of discrimination and sexual harassment. The Board of Freeholders passed a resolution authorizing the settlement at its business meeting Thursday. County Counsel Malcolm V. Carton said attorneys for the county and the engineer — Carol C. Melnick, 47, of Jackson — had agreed not to divulge settlement details. The Asbury Park Press filed an Open Public Records Act request for the information Friday. Under state law, access to such requested records "shall be granted or denied by the custodian as soon as possible." Carton said Tuesday that no decision has been made on the newspaper's request. John Paff, the New Jersey Libertarian Party's open-government advocate, said there is no reason the records should be kept from the public. "They can't do that," Paff said. "For a government entity to claim there's a confidentiality agreement, I don't think that's a defendable position. The public is likely paying some amount to settle this and they are entitled to know how much. And if there's wrongdoing, the public can evaluate that and demand there be disciplinary actions." FOI AT WORK: IMMUNIZATION RECORDS: More Massachusetts parents are sending their children to school without the required vaccines, according to records obtained by Team 5 Investigates. State law requires students to have a complete immunization record before they can enter a classroom. That was one of the reasons why Christine Olson took her newborn and 4-year-old to the pediatrician's office for their shots. "I don't think it's fair for children to walk around without being vaccinated, but that's a parent's choice," she said. FOI AT WORK: A misdemeanor assault conviction from a road rage incident that has state officials considering whether to end the teaching career of Grosse Point South High School's award-winning choir director is described as an aberration by her supporters. But the personnel file of the teacher who is so beloved that admirers operate a Web site in her honor shows Ellen Bowen was disciplined at least five times since 2004 for berating and humiliating students and staffers, according to records obtained Thursday by The Detroit News through the Freedom of Information Act. The files refer to a string of complaints about her temper dating to 1994. In the past three years, she received reprimands for shaming a student by cutting his hair because an audience member complained about it; calling a senior an "arrogant a------" and accusing a custodian of installing a video camera in the Performing Arts Center to watch pornography. NEW JERSEY GOV LOSES ROUND: A Superior Court justice declined to dismiss a lawsuit seeking e-mails between Governor Corzine and union official Carla Katz and demanded copies to review. Judge Paul Innes, sitting in Trenton, also said that a citizen could have as much a right to the e-mails as the state ethics panel that read them earlier this year. "They're not infallible," Innes said of the panel, which concluded that communications between Corzine and Katz -- his ex-girlfriend and head of the state's largest public workers union -- had no influence on contract negotiations. Lawyers for Corzine's office and Katz have 30 days to produce the e-mails and related documents, Innes ruled. The lawsuit was filed by Tom Wilson, chairman of the state Republican Party, who was looking for evidence that Corzine and Katz inappropriately discussed the negotiations. Wilson and several news organizations, including The Record, sought the e-mails via the state Open Public Records Act, but were denied. HIGH COURT AFFIRMS PUBLIC SALARIES: The salaries of government employees in California, including police officers, are a public record and must be available upon request to "ensure transparency," the state Supreme Court ruled recently. "Openness in government is essential to the functioning of a democracy," Chief Justice Ronald George wrote in a 30-page opinion, ending a lawsuit the Contra Costa Times filed more than three years ago against the city of Oakland. Justices found that government employees should not have an expectation of privacy about their gross salaries even if disclosure of the information "may cause discomfort or embarrassment." The justices wrote that police salaries must also be made public except in narrow circumstances "where an officer's anonymity is essential to his or her safety," the decision states. The justices affirmed that police cannot use broad claims of officer safety to make blanket denials of salary information. ARIZONA PAPER WINS FOI CASE: Public officials can be ordered to provide public records even before they have been created, the state Court of Appeals ruled Thursday. In a unanimous decision, the judges said they see nothing wrong with requiring the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office to provide copies of press releases to all news outlets at the same time. The ruling is most immediately a victory for the West Valley View, a Maricopa County weekly that found itself off the agency's e-mail list after an editorial critical of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Appellate Judge Diane Johnsen noted that the sheriff's department never claimed that the press releases are not public. Instead, Dennis Wilenchik, the agency's attorney, said there is no legal authority for any ongoing request for public documents that have not yet been created. Wilenchik said his client cannot be ordered to release a document until someone has requested it -- meaning after it already has been released.
MAINE SUPREMES OPEN SETTLEMENT DOCS: Maine's highest court ruled that settlement documents between a corporation, the city of Bangor and the state Department of Environmental Protection are public records subject to disclosure requirements of the Maine Freedom of Access Act. In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Judicial Court upheld a lower court opinion that the documents should be made public. The case dates back to 2002, when the DEP designated a cove on the Penobscot River in Bangor as a hazardous substance site because it was contaminated with coal tar. The city of Bangor sued Citizens Communications, a Connecticut-based company that owned the former Bangor Gas Works, which was allegedly responsible for the contamination. Claims between the city and Citizens eventually were tried in U.S. District Court, with the court ruling that both entities were partially liable for polluting the cove. Following the court's finding, the city, the DEP and Citizens held confidential negotiations to develop a remediation plan and exchanged draft consent decrees... UNDER THE DOME: FOI LEGISLATIONNORTH CAROLINA TO MAKE HOSPITAL COMPENSATION PUBLIC: Lawmakers reached a compromise on public records that will require public hospitals to make available the total compensation they give to their top executives and employees. The House and Senate had disagreed over whether the state's 30 or so publicly owned hospitals should have to release more than just the base salary of their workers. A 2005 state Appeals Court ruling involving The Charlotte Observer had sided with a public hospital that wanted to conceal the full compensation of current and former workers, arguing that releasing it would put them at a disadvantage with their private rivals which don't have to disclose the information. The final edition of the bill approved by both the House and Senate would generally keep confidential how much most public hospital employees make. But it would make a public record of the salary, incentives, bonus and other benefits of the hospital's chief executive officer, four highest paid executives and five other "key employees." WASHINGTON PANEL DEBATES SELECTION: Gov. Chris Gregoire is appointing Seattle City Attorney Tom Carr as chairman of a new committee to examine the more than 300 exemptions to the state's public records act, a move that is being criticized by some open-records advocates. Greg Overstreet, the former open-records ombudsman for Attorney General Rob McKenna, said Friday that the governor couldn't have picked "a more polarizing figure." Overstreet is now in private practice, specializing in public disclosure. Overstreet cited a recent statewide public records request by the Seattle P-I seeking internal affairs investigations concerning cases of police officers driving while intoxicated. "Seattle was the only city to black out virtually all the information in these reports," he said. NJ BILL WOULD PLACE INFO ONLINE: One day -- maybe one day soon -- democracy in New Jersey might look something like this: Anyone with an Internet connection goes to his hometown Web site and (click) views the police report on the burglary that happened down the street. And then (click) scans health-inspection reports for favorite supermarkets and restaurants. And then (click) finds the municipal budget, and (click) sees who in the neighborhood wants to build a McMansion and (click) even learns how much town employees make. Sound a little far-fetched? Maybe not. INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENTSUK FOI CHANGES STALL: Controversial plans by MPs to exempt themselves from the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act have stalled in the House of Lords after failing to find a sponsor willing to introduce them. The private members bill that would exempt members of parliament from having to release information under the Act cannot now be introduced before the summer recess on 26 July. If a sponsor can be found, Conservative MP David Maclean's Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill could be introduced in the autumn, but probably in a watered-down form. As IWR reported last month, the bill would free MPs from having to release correspondence with their constituents , and remove the legal duty on public bodies to disclose any correspondence with MPs. In a separate development, the second consultation period on the government's plans to tighten the rules on requests for information under the FoI Act came to an end last month. The government now has three months to consider and publish its findings. ON THE EDITORIAL PAGESThe Arkansas Leader hails a ruling on the public records status of e-mail: "Pulaski Circuit Judge Mary Ann McGowan is our nominee for public servant of the year: For the third time, she has defended the state's Freedom of Information Act to the letter, ruling that Pulaski County must release just about every e-mail between a former employee accused of stealing public funds and a woman he romanced while she did business with the county. The Arkansas Democrat Gazette had sued to get access to the emails after the former comptroller was arrested and charged with fraud in the misuse of county funds. The state Supreme Court had put on hold Judge McGowan's decision ordering Pulaski County to release the potentially embarrassing emails from Ron Quillen, the former comptroller and director of administrative services for the county, who now faces criminal charges for pocketing some $42,000 in public funds. The Supreme Court told Judge McGowan to review all the e-mails first, and on Thursday she decided the county must release all but the most obscene materials from Quillen and his paramour. The Clovis, New Mexico Courier-Journal on the passing of an FOI champion: "Sunshine lost a good friend last week. Bob Johnson, who spent the last two decades fighting for the public's right to know what its government is doing, died in Albuquerque on Saturday after suffering a stroke. He was 84. Johnson helped start the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government in 1989. Media outlets across the state — including the Clovis News Journal, Portales News-Tribune and Quay County Sun — sought his advice first when confronted with government secrecy. FOG's executive director also helped the general public, students and even public officials understand the state's laws governing public records and meetings. Subscribing to The ADVOCATE LISTSERVTo subscribe:
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Note: LISTSERV will automatically pull your e-mail address out of the message; you don't need to include it. You must always send messages to the list from the original e-mail account you used to subscribe. NFOIC Staff
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