Social Media Adds a Twist in Public Records

In some cases, posting a message to a social networking site such as Facebook can be as public as writing a letter to the editor.

But if government is doing the Facebook posting, is it public record?

It's a new concept that Herschel Fink, a Detroit-based attorney specializing in media law, said appears to be untested in Michigan courts. But he thinks social media activity by government should be considered public record.

"If government and officials are communicating on issues of government policy, using these new means of communication - social media - then the public has to have access to that as well," he said.

Public record, Fink said, is anything of an informational nature that is created by, received by, kept by or used by a public body.

All public records, unless falling under narrow categories of exception, are under the purview of Michigan's Freedom of Information Act.

Some cities and states appear to be acknowledging on their own that their social media activity is public record.

"City of Seattle social media sites are subject to State of Washington public records laws ... " reads Seattle's social media policy, which is available on the city's website, www.seattle.gov. "The Department maintaining the site is responsible for responding completely and accurately to any public records request for public records on social media."

North Carolina takes a similar position in its social media policy, which was published in December 2009.

Michigan is in the process of finalizing a policy, said Kurt Weiss, a spokesman for the state's Department of Technology, Management and Budget.

"What the state realizes is like other states, younger generations are getting their messages in other ways, be it Facebook or Twitter," he said. "So when the state has important information to share, that's an important avenue we have to look at."


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House Rejects Oil Leak Public Records Legislation

The Louisiana House voted Thursday against making public those records in the Governor’s Office and other government agencies that are associated with the BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil rig disaster.

State Rep. Wayne Waddell, R-Shreveport, proposed adding the public records provision to Senate Bill 167, which addressed the confidentiality of cemetery records.

But the House balked with 42 representatives voting for the change while 54 voted against it. The legislation needed 53 votes to pass.

The failed effort essentially served as a test run for similar legislation that returns to the House for a concurrence vote as soon as today.

The vote came a day after the Louisiana Senate — without anyone voting against it — supported the public records amendment being tacked onto other legislation without discussion or debate. That legislation, House Bill 37, needs a vote by the House on whether to agree with the Senate’s addition.

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High Court Hears Arguments on Petitions And Privacy

Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism, some bordering on outrage, Wednesday for arguments that people who sign a petition for a state referendum should be about to have their names kept private.

Speaking to the lawyer challenging a Washington state open-records law, Justice Antonin Scalia said, "The people of Washington evidently think that this is not too much of an imposition upon people's courage — to stand up and sign something and be willing to stand behind it."

Scalia was most vigorous in protesting arguments that Washington residents who signed a petition for a ballot measure against gay legal rights had a right to privacy in their political speech.

"What about just wanting to know their names so you can criticize them?" asked Scalia, prompting laughter in the courtroom. "Is that such a bad thing in a democracy?"

In another vein, Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned whether arguments against public disclosure of names could extend beyond the context of ballot initiatives and possibly hide important government operations from the public.

Most open to the challengers' case was Justice Samuel Alito, who questioned the states' interest in trying to make the signatures public. He worried about people who might be "dissuaded from signing because they fear retaliation."

Alito asked Attorney General Robert McKenna, defending the open-records law, whether a state could require phone numbers, as well as addresses, to be made public, or whether someone's religion could be noted on the petition. McKenna said yes on phone numbers but no on religion.

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N.J. Mayor Proposes Limit to Requests Under Open Public Records Act

Longport Mayor Nicholas Russo is at his wits' end after his town put up a costly fight staving off a resident who filed excessive records requests to simply "bust chops."

Russo has proposed amending the state's Open Public Records Act, which provides guidelines for interaction between the public requesting government information and the agencies that provide it. Under his proposal, there would be a limit on the number of requests individuals and private agencies could make during a certain time.

Open government advocates have cringed at the idea of putting any type of restriction on records requesters. The current law, some say, already offers solutions for records requests that pose to substantially disrupt operations in towns, big and small.

Moreover, advocates say municipalities that put off investment in e-governance technology — such as providing a searchable electronic database of government documents on the Web — do more to hurt taxpayers than help them.

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Law Enforcement Officers’ Home Addresses Could Be Removed From Public Records

Idaho police officers want to remove the home addresses of all law enforcement officials from state public records. The protection would cover police officers, prosecutors, judges, and corrections officers.

“It’s easy for people in the public, including criminals, to find a police officer’s home address and threaten their spouses and children,” Boise Police Officer Joel Teuber told the Senate State Affairs Committee Friday. Teuber, who also spoke for the Idaho Fraternal Order of Police, said attacks and threats to law enforcement officers have increased during the past few years, including threats to employees at state prisons. “They’ve had several incidents where inmates’ family members have gotten a hold of a correction officers’ home phone numbers and addresses and used that to harass, threaten, and intimidate staff members and their family, sometimes to the point of using it to coerce the staff members to do favors for the inmates.”

Teuber said taking the home addresses out of public records would provide a needed safeguard. “It’s a little disconcerting,” he said. “Not so much to me, but more to my wife and my kids. And I think that applies to most judges and prosecutors.”

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Lawsuits Increase Despite White House Transparency Pledge, Court Records Show

More than 300 people and groups have sued the Obama administration fighting to get federal government records in the year since President Obama pledged his administration would be the most open in history.

In case after case, the plaintiffs contend that little has changed since the Bush administration, when most began their quests for records. Agencies still often fight requests for disclosure, contending that national security and internal decision making needs to be protected.

The lawsuits cover a wide range of issues. A retired Marine wants to review soldier autopsies to learn whether the Pentagon has issued defective body armor. A Texas law professor questions whether the route for the Mexico-U.S. border fence unfairly harmed minority landowners. Closer to home, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation continues its fight to learn whether agencies are properly punishing those who destroy wetlands.

Despite the administration's progress in opening scores of important and once-secret documents, court dockets show a slight increase in the number of suits filed under the federal Freedom of Information Act since Obama was sworn into office. The electronic court records show 319 lawsuits filed since January 2009. Under the final two years of the Bush administration, 278 and 298 records lawsuits were filed in 2007 and 2008, respectively. People seeking records can sue only after the government repeatedly rejects their requests, usually after months of attempts and appeals.

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Public Records? Who Says So?

Getting everyone to sing from the same sheet of music is a pesky business, it doesn’t matter if it is a small family, a community, or an entire state. Obviously the more people involved, the more difficult the task.

The task is made more arduous when we are dealing with laws, because few of us have law degrees. It is worth a moment of our time to understand the basics of a new law recently passed in New Jersey, because this law deals with a fundamental issue currently coming into question in our democracy: Who is in charge, the citizens, or the people who run government?

Obviously, we know from our history books, the power resides with the citizens, but nothing stays the same, and things not exercised wither away. One of the things withering away is the understanding, both on the part of citizens and public officials alike that public records are in fact “public” records, and with rare exception are open to anybody who wishes to see them for any reason, stated or unstated.

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Once a Public Record, Always a Public Record... Or Not

State legislators have a longtime practice of going back and expunging controversial votes.

If state legislators hope one day to rebuild the public's shaken confidence in their institution, they could start by ending their practice of erasing controversial votes from the public record.

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FSU Sues NCAA

The battle between Florida State and the NCAA will now enter a courtroom, as FSU announced Friday it is taking legal action to force the NCAA to release the public records associated with FSU's ongoing appeal.

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Public Record Request Denied? Don't Give Up!

When the answer to your public records request is no, what do you do next?

Several readers who requested information that should be public have written to say their requests were denied. That happens more frequently than you might suspect.

Read the full story here.

Want to know if Gov. Bill Richardson met with the son of a friend and prominent fundraiser before the state decided to invest in a fund that ultimately cost New Mexico $90 million?

Good luck.

The Independent sought to view documents from the governor’s office from January through August 2006 that would have divulged with whom he had met in the months prior to the costly investment that benefitted the son of the governor’s friend to the tune of millions of dollars.

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Court to Decide if Court Records are Public Records

Two cases argued today before the Supreme Court of Washington present a significant question about public access to court records and could result in a major expansion of the state’s Public Records Act (chap. 42.56 RCW). The cases are Morgan v. Federal Way & Tacoma News, Inc., No. 81556-9 & Koenig v. Federal Way, No. 82288-3.

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Public Records Fight Cost Schoold District $44,560

The Polk County School District spent about $44,560 in a fight against a Lakeland public rights advocate.

Nearly $20,000 has been paid to Bartow law firm Boswell & Dunlap for its work in the case, while the district paid $25,000 to advocate Joel Chandler for his lawyer's fees after Circuit Judge Roger Alcott ruled in Chandler's favor for the access to names, phone numbers, addresses and dependents' names of an estimated 13,000 school employees who receive health care.

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Do Text Messages Count as Public Records?

Most people would agree that “texting” while driving is a bad idea. But what about “texting” while meeting?

While the technology allowing people to communicate instantly has become common in public places, its use in public meetings is testing the laws on open government.

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Court to Decide if Ohio School Tests are Public Records

Forget about "cheat sheets" or copying answers from the kid in the next desk.

If a group of Cincinnati school teachers prevails in a case now before the Ohio Supreme Court, enterprising students might be able to ace their tests simply by using the state's public-records law to get a copy of the test before it's given.

So contends the Cincinnati Public Schools, which is fighting the teachers' demands for copies of semester exams given to ninth graders.

The science teacher who brought the case, Paul Perrea, contends that the semester exams -- which account for 25 percent of a student's grade -- might have been poorly designed and might not reflect a student's actual learning.

Without getting a copy of the test, however, it's impossible to be sure, Perrea argues.

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Records won’t go online, Terrebonne president says

Plans to compile government records for public viewing in a computer system rather than paper files won’t include putting those documents on the Internet, at least for now, Terrebonne Parish officials said.

But a statewide good-government group says making records available on the parish Web site, www.tpcg.org, should be a priority.

The reality is that citizens still have to drive or walk to the government’s headquarters to view the documents, said Ann Heath, staff attorney and research analyst at the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, or PAR.

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Sudbury Resident Hopes to Find Out Why Public Safety Overtime Costs Are So High

Andrew MacEntee wants to analyze public safety payroll records to determine if there is abuse in the system, but his request for the public documents took more than two months for the town to release.

The Massachusetts Public Records Law says such requests shall be honored within 10 calendar days.

MacEntee, who sent several requests to town officials and copied all e-mails to the Town Crier, was recently informed he will get the Police and Fire Department payroll records for calendar year 2008.

MacEntee wants to analyze why public safety overtime is so high, similar to information the Boston Herald published.

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Lawmakers Move to Carve Out Public Records Exemption for Teachers

A bill designed to protect teachers would exempt a school employees' name, photograph and other personal information from public records requirements.

“My concern is I don't want to wait until a child (gets a failing grade) … and a child goes ballistic or a parent goes ballistic and something impacts (a teacher) negatively,” said bill sponsor Rep. Mia Jones, D-Jacksonville.

The measure (HB 409) would exempt a school district employee’s name, social security number, home address, employment status, home telephone number, and photograph from the list of records that must be made public. It would also specifically exempt any information about the employee’s children.

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Lawmakers Move to Carve Out Public Records Exemption for Teachers

A bill designed to protect teachers would exempt a school employees' name, photograph and other personal information from public records requirements.

“My concern is I don't want to wait until a child (gets a failing grade) … and a child goes ballistic or a parent goes ballistic and something impacts (a teacher) negatively,” said bill sponsor Rep. Mia Jones, D-Jacksonville.

The measure (HB 409) would exempt a school district employee’s name, social security number, home address, employment status, home telephone number, and photograph from the list of records that must be made public. It would also specifically exempt any information about the employee’s children.

Read more here.

Oregon Lawmakers Move to Close Gun Records

Sheriffs around Oregon have been sending an unusual letter to holders of concealed weapons permits with this message: If you don't want the public to know you've got a permit, we'll try to help you out.

The letter from the sheriffs says newspapers and others are trying to get lists of people who have concealed handgun permits, sparking a legal challenge that's pending in the Oregon Court of Appeals.

And as the appeals court mulls the issue, Oregon lawmakers are pursuing legislation to take those records completely out of public view by prohibiting their release under the Oregon public records law.

Read more at AP News.