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.

Read more here.

Attorneys join Wisconsin Rapids teachers' e-mail legal battle

Four attorneys who represent employees from two of the state's largest cities have become involved in a Wisconsin Rapids School District lawsuit involving teacher e-mails.

Lawyers from Milwaukee and Madison have sided with the five Wisconsin Rapids teachers who are arguing that personal e-mails from their work computers are not public records that should be open to scrutiny.

Read more here.

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.

Read more here.

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.

White House Blocks Visitor Log Request

The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn't have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.

Despite President Barack Obama's pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com's request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present. It also denied a narrower request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought logs of visits by executives of coal companies.

Read more 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.

Read more here.

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.

Read more here.