Two senators are proposing the most significant reforms to the Freedom of Information Act in four decades, including altering a key exemption that government agencies frequently use to deny access to a vast swath of Executive Branch documents.
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Month: June 2014
MI Gov. Rick Snyder signs laws shielding gun records from Freedom of Information Act requests
The legislation signed Tuesday codifies a 1999 Michigan Supreme Court decision that found disclosure of gun registry records to be an invasion of privacy. The information will still be available to law enforcement officials for certain purposes, though there are new restrictions on when police can access the records.
A log of who accessed the records and the reason for doing so also is now required by the new laws.
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Four selected to receive Kansas Sunshine Coalition award
The Kansas Sunshine Coalition for Open Government has selected four Johnson County area recipients to receive its 2014 Friend of Open Government Award, it was announced in Topeka today.
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Feds To Post Open Data From 700 R&D Facilities
Entrepreneurs and innovators can now access machine-readable research data in the areas of energy, healthcare, and space from more than 700 federal research and development facilities to assist them in researching, building, and testing new technologies through a major enhancement to the Research.Data.gov portal.
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Editorial: Sides Agree: Maybe AR FOIA Should Be Expanded
Stop us if you’ve heard this before: A liberal, a conservative, a lawyer and a legislator walk into a bar, well … into a legislative hearing. Oh never mind, we’re going to cut right to the punchline: They agreed on something.
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SC Supreme Court ruling shows weakness of open government law
The S.C. Supreme Court decided last week that government bodies don’t have to let you know what they’re planning to do. The court ruled that bodies like school boards, county councils and city councils can hold regular meetings without ever issuing an agenda, and if they do issue an agenda, they can change it on the fly and depart from it at will.
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Critics say new IL FOIA law could stifle information
A bill rushed through the closing days of the General Assembly's spring session is drawing the ire of a good-government group that contends it will restrict the ability of citizens to get information about their governments.
Supporters, though, said the bill is a way to help municipalities deal with a comparative handful of people who file excessive requests under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, tying up employees who could better be used doing other work.
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Advocates call for Georgia ethics chief’s head
An ethics watchdog group called for the resignation of the state ethics commission director Tuesday, citing her involvement in recent whistleblower payouts.
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Effort to make state-related universities in PA more transparent clears key hurdle
The open records law has been viewed by most as a step toward transparency and accountability. But it has its problems. That’s why state Sen. Lloyd Smucker and other lawmakers in the Senate State Government Committee are proposing some changes.
The first area to be updated deals with how the law applied to the four state-related universities — Penn State, Temple, Pittsburgh and Lincoln. The committee unanimously agreed Wednesday that those schools will be required to create searchable and downloadable databases on their freely accessible public websites.
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Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information announces open government award recipients
A police chief, a state senator, an FOI Commission employee and two journalists have won the annual open government awards from the nonprofit Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information, which has been advocating for freedom of information for six decades.
Blogger and Digital First Media columnist Andy Thibault received the Stephen A. Collins Award for his dogged pursuit on virtually every FOI battlefront in the past year. Thibault was instrumental in ensuring that the clemency hearing of convicted murderer Bonnie Foreshaw proceeded in public, according to the CCFOI.
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