FOI Oklahoma accepting nominations for annual First Amendment awards ceremony

FOI Oklahoma is accepting nominations for its eighth-annual awards ceremony that recognizes organizations and individuals who promoted the First Amendment and freedom of information in 2014.

The ceremony will be March 14 at the Ronald J. Norick Downtown Library, 300 Park Ave. Sunshine Week activities begin the following day.

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Online videos help hold OK state government accountable

At first glance, it was just like many other emails sent by area residents. The writer, a constituent of South Logan County, expressed his frustration with the regulatory actions of a large state agency. While I understood the writer's frustration and his valid description of a legitimate abuse, I was excited to realize that his email contained a validation of one of the most important transparency tools, a tool that allowed this South Logan County resident to demonstrate an error by a large state agency.

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Freedom of Information laws a public atrocity

Our View: Public officials need to respect the freedom of access granted by the Oklahoma Open Records Act and honor their duty to fulfill such requests.

Freedom of Information laws are intended to allow the public access to records they have rights to review and posses. Additionally, the laws encourage bureaucratic transparency and accountability. These laws exist to ensure freedom of access to records and meetings that are public information. Naturally, we become suspicious when public officials try to skirt Freedom of Information laws and obscure requests.

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Oklahoma transparency laws drawing national attention

Last month I received some great news. A report titled ìState Open Data Policies and Portalsî was released by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Data Innovation and ranked Oklahoma as one of the top six top-scoring states for its open data policies.

This is just the latest in a series of national recognitions of the transparency advancement for which we have spent years working toward.

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Private prisons and transparency

Taxpayers fund the operations of private prisons in Oklahoma, just as they do state and federal ones — but they largely don’t have access to the same information and records about those private facilities.

A new report argues that private prison operators should be subject to the same level of scrutiny and transparency as state- and federal-run prisons.

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Oklahoma governor’s office releases thousands of records, but withholds some

From NewsOK.com:

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin released more than 51,000 pages of documents Friday to meet public records requests for information about how her office made health care decisions, but advocates of the state’s open record laws are concerned about what was not released.

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Attorney general tells Oklahoma chiefs of police that information is public

State Attorney General Scott Pruitt has written a letter to the Oklahoma Association of Chiefs of Police about complaints that police departments are violating the Open Records Act by withholding public information from initial incident reports.

“The state Legislature has made it clear in this regard that a police department's initial offense report or cover sheet should be open for public inspection, regardless of its inclusion in an investigation file,” Pruitt wrote in his Jan. 4 letter.

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