The art of compromise seems to have died in Washington, D.C. Fortunately, it still has a pulse in Tallahassee.
This week the Florida Senate sponsor of one of the most pernicious bills in the current legislative session agreed to some positive changes. The amended bill isn't perfect, but it's greatly improved.
Now the House needs to follow suit.
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Read More… from [Op-ed] Protect Floridians’ right to know: Where we stand
The lead poisoning of the entire city of Flint, Michigan was preventable and should never have happened.
Numerous pundits and industry experts have said this. Most of them, however, explain that if government had functioned properly, the environmental agencies would have properly communicated to their higher-ups and the problem would have been spotted much sooner.
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Read More… from To prevent another Flint, make all open data machine-readable
A Sedgwick County judge has ruled that a Wichita State University statistician won’t get access to paper tapes from voting machines to search for fraud or mistakes.
Judge Tim Lahey denied a motion by Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman to dismiss the case brought by statistician Beth Clarkson. But that was a hollow victory for Clarkson. Her point in filing the lawsuit was to gain access to the tapes to check the accuracy of the voting machines, searching for an answer to statistical anomalies she has found in election results.
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Read More… from Judge denies Kansas statistician access to paper tapes to audit voting machines
As the voters said when adopting the Public Records Act in 1972: “The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them.”
The people use public records to learn what their government is up to, so they can maintain control.
But under an evolving proposal in the state House of Representatives, records requests that are now answered promptly could languish at the bottom of a pile, and much of what government does could be hidden behind a wall of bureaucracy.
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Read More… from Op-ed: Fine tune, but don’t overhaul Washington state’s Public Records Act
The Washington State Senate on Tuesday unanimously approved Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s agency-request bill to increase transparency in government by enhancing penalties for violations of Washington’s Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA).
The OPMA requires that all meetings of multimember governing bodies of local and state public agencies be open and accessible to the public.
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Read More… from Washington State Senate passes bill to strengthen open meetings law
The Oregon Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would increase insurance industry transparency.
The bill would allow the Department of Consumer and Business Services to publicly release complaints against insurers.
Under current law, complaints against insurers are not public records, and there is no publicly available official data about how often insurers defend their policyholders in Oregon. Continue…
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Read More… from Oregon Senate passes insurance transparency bill
An Iowa Senate subcommittee on Tuesday approved a bill that would launch a study of the use, storage, public inspection and confidentiality of body camera video.
Body cameras are increasingly worn by Iowa law enforcement officers to record interactions with the public. The devices are often promoted as improving accountability for police, but in several cases law enforcement agencies have refused to release the videos.
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Read More… from Police body camera study bill sent to Iowa Senate panel
In an attempt to alleviate a backlog of open records requests, a Senate committee on Tuesday granted Tennessee Comptroller Justin Wilson additional funding dedicated to hiring two new employees who will be tasked with addressing the issue.
During the comptroller’s annual budget presentation to the Senate finance committee, Wilson requested $264,000 to specifically hire the employees for the Office of Records Counsel, which is overseen by Wilson’s office.
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Read More… from Tennessee approves funding to address open records backlog
The Denver Police Department is defending more than $1.3 million in spending over the past three years for its media relations unit, despite questions from officers on the street.
The department claims its finely-tuned social media and video production efforts have been wildly popular with the Denver public, with some videos gaining millions of views and some Tweets going viral and gaining national attention.
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Georgia school officials may be working with less state control, but lawmakers want them to work more openly, as well.
Two proposals that cleared the state House of Representatives this week would require school administrators to publicly post information about curriculum and finances. Rep. Dave Belton, R-Buckhead, sponsored a measure that requires districts to “make readily accessible” school-level details and documents that are already public information.
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Read More… from Georgia schools may be forced into more transparency
