|
National Stories
A disclaimer published at the bottom of meeting agendas and model bills from the American Legislative Exchange Council’s most recent meeting in Oklahoma City, obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, reads: "Because this is an internal ALEC document, ALEC believes it is not subject to disclosure under any state Freedom of Information or Public Records Act." "If you receive a request for disclosure of this or any other ALEC document under your state's Freedom of Information or Public Records Act, please contact Michael Bowman, Senior Director, Policy and Strategic Initiatives," it says. For a private organization to assert that its interactions with state legislators are not subject to public records laws is "shocking," says Mark Caramanica, Freedom of Information Director at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
PR Watch
Onondaga County, N.Y., will alert the media whenever a request is made for the names and addresses of pistol permit holders, the county legislature decided today. By a unanimous vote, legislators approved a local law proposed by Legislator John Dougherty, R- Liverpool, that requires the county to issue a news release to the media when anyone files a Freedom of Information Law request seeking the names and addresses of those with pistol permits. The news release would not name the person or company requesting the information.
Syracuse Post-Standard
Springfield, Ill., Mayor Mike Houston is weighing in on recent controversy caused when the police chief ordered documents shredded after only four years. The city's labor contract states officers' internal affairs documents will be kept for five years, but Chief Robert Williams recently signed a memorandum changing the time frame to four years. Calvin Christian, who filed a FOIA request for the documents, is suing the city. The mayor said he thinks the controversy has roots with other officers.
FOX Illinois
A Minnesota trial judge Friday denied a media effort to unseal investigative materials in the case of a former college football coach who was accused of possessing child pornography. Blue Earth County District Court Judge Krista Jass held that both Minnesota public records law and the First Amendment prevent public access to the files.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
A case before the Minnesota Supreme Court has broad implications on whether documents held by a private company should be made public if the work the firm is doing is funded by taxpayers. Johnson Controls, Inc., of Milwaukee, is managing a $79 million construction project for St. Louis County schools. Johnson Controls hired a subcontractor, Architectural Resources Inc., of Hibbing. The companies have refused to release their business contract to Timberjay Newspaper, which sued to get access to the document under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. Timberjay editor Marshall Helmberger said examining the contract could help the district determine whether it could recover any of cost overruns.
Brainerd Dispatch
The Obama administration, resolving years of internal debate, is on the verge of backing a Federal Bureau of Investigation plan for a sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws that would make it easier to wiretap people who communicate using the Internet rather than by traditional phone services, according to officials familiar with the deliberations. The FBI director, Robert S. Mueller III, has argued that the bureau’s ability to carry out court-approved eavesdropping on suspects is “going dark” as communications technology evolves, and since 2010 has pushed for a legal mandate requiring companies like Facebook and Google to build into their instant-messaging and other such systems a capacity to comply with wiretap orders.
New York Times
The fight in California to liberate people’s personal information from the companies that track them online has been put on hold for the rest of the year. Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal recently announced her decision to stall her Right to Know Act of 2013, delaying action until sometime next year. In a press release, Lowenthal says that the bill, which would let Californians ask businesses what it knows about them and who it’s sharing that information with, has broad support, “but in the legislature, it has become clear that we still have our work cut out for us.”
The Verge
Lobbyists in Georgia cannot spend more than $75 at a time while seeking to influence Georgia officials under legislation signed into law Monday that still leaves some loopholes and unresolved questions. The legislation signed by Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, takes effect Jan. 1 and sets the first state limits on how much money lobbyists can spend. Right now, lobbyists can spend as much as they want so long as they publicly disclose their expenditures. “Our success as leaders of this state depends heavily on the public’s ability to trust us,” Deal said during a bill signing ceremony at the Statehouse. “And we cannot expect them to honor our laws or to elect us to do further good for this state unless we have put in place those measures whereby with certainty they know that we have their best interests in mind.”
Athens Banner-Herald
A research team led by Mark Pagel at the University of Reading in England has identified 23 “ultraconserved words” that have remained largely unchanged for 15,000 years. Words that sound and mean the same thing in different languages are called “cognates”. These are five words that have cognates in at least four of the seven Eurasiatic language families. Those languages, about 700 in all, are spoken in an area extending from the British Isles to western China and from the Arctic to southern India. Only one word, “thou” (the singular form of “you”), has a cognate in all seven families.
Washington Post
|