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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Changes could be on horizon for Pa.'s records law

The five-page Right-to-Know Law request that arrived in March at the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare was so broad that officials worried how much it would cost to fulfill it.

A Philadelphia lawyer was looking for information about prescription drug reimbursements in the state Medicaid program going back 18 years.

The agency figured it would take a team of 11 people a year to dig it all up.

"That's not the whole commonwealth work force, but that's a lot," said Barbara Adams, general counsel to Gov. Ed Rendell. "And a whole year is beyond the time frames that are permitted."

The lawyer, Stephen A. Loney Jr., later withdrew that request, and isn't commenting about it or the legal battle over a more narrow version he later filed. But Adams said his requests reflect some of the many issues that have arisen during the first year under Pennsylvania's revised Right-to-Know Law, which may soon be amended.

Should taxpayers have to foot a part of the cost of massive requests? How does the law work when the records are also integral to an ongoing lawsuit? Should the government be able to cancel a request it deems to be a practical impossibility?

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Judicial email not public in West Virginia

Personal e-mail messages on government accounts are not public records, even when they are between a judge and a party to a pending case, the West Virginia Supreme Court ruled Nov. 12.

In the 4-1 ruling, the court held that former Supreme Court Chief Justice Elliott "Spike" Maynard could keep private all of the 13 messages he exchanged with Massey Energy Chief Executive Don Blankenship last year. At that time, Massey Energy — one of the largest coal producers in Appalachia — had several cases pending before the court, including the appeal of a $50 million jury verdict.

The Associated Press was initially denied access to the messages under West Virginia's public records law but won release of at least five of the messages when a lower court ruled they were public records because they dealt with Maynard’s judicial campaign. Last week's ruling put all of the messages out of the public's reach.

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Court rules NCAA documents in FSU academic-fraud investigation are public records

TALLAHASSEE - A Leon County judge ordered today that NCAA documents related to an academic-fraud investigation at Florida State University are public records, a major victory for press groups that pushed for the release of the information.

At issue are the transcript of an October 2008 hearing in Indianapolis, attended by FSU President T.K. Wetherell, in which FSU and NCAA officials discussed the case involving 61 student-athletes who cheated, many in an online music class. The transcripts are expected to be 300 to 350 pages long, according to lawyers representing news organizations including the Orlando Sentinel and The Associated Press.

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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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