As he signed a new open meetings bill into law, Gov. Peter Shumlin expressed "serious concern" about parts of it, including a do-over provision that allows government bodies a chance to fix violations without penalty.
Now some open government advocates are asking for a do-over on the entire law, and a key legislator says lawmakers will likely revisit some aspects of it next year.
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Read More… from Misgivings come with new Vermont open meetings law
After two days of hearing secret testimony about a school board member’s alleged misconduct, the Hamburg Central School District’s lawyer said the sessions must be kept confidential because the proceedings are quasi-judicial.
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Read More… from Hamburg (NY) School Board misconduct hearings will stay closed
Google and other internet companies find themselves in a quandary over how to strike a balance between privacy and freedom of information as the top world search engine took a first step towards upholding an EU privacy ruling.
Google moved overnight to put up an online form that will allow European citizens to request that links to obsolete information be taken down — its first response to the ruling by Europe's top court on "the right to be forgotten".
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Connecticut's Freedom of Information Commission was asked Friday to reconsider how poor a prison inmate must be to obtain public documents for free.
Derrick Taylor, a 43-year-old inmate serving an 80-year sentence for a 1992 murder outside a Hartford bar, is requesting several thousand pages of documents from the state Department of Correction related to operations of Northern Correctional Institution, where he is housed. The documents include commissary contracts and details about the prison's ventilation and television systems.
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Read More… from Connecticut inmate contests $200 document fee
The key to our watchdog work — shining a light on government and holding public officials accountable — comes down to a single word: Transparency.
In our world it means relatively easy access to public information — documents and records on how government employees spend our tax dollars and make their policy decisions.
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Wyoming ranks among the worst states for government transparency, according to the president of the Society of Professional Journalists.
David Cuillier, director of the University of Arizona School of Journalism, is one of about a half-dozen researchers who study public and press access to government information nationally and internationally.
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Read More… from In terms of transparency, Wyoming is among the worst
