Current Headlines

Letter from State Bar president Howard Martin to Supreme Court Chief Justice Leroy Hassell asking for clarification on certain points related to Hassell’s request that the bar immediately stop posting adverse disciplinary results until the appeal time has expired. Virginia Lawyers Weekly article and Virginian-Pilot editorial.

 http://www.examiner.com/printa-1287016~AP_CEO_Pushes_for_More_Open_Government.htmlPoliticsAP CEO Pushes for More Open GovernmentBy HOPE YEN, The Associated Press2008-03-19 01:32:40.0Current rank: # 4,675 of 9,698WASHINGTON –At a time of continued government secrecy, the news media should press the presidential candidates on whether their administration would enforce "the spirit as well as the letter of the law" protecting the public’s right to know,…

News Partners Launch Second Salaries Projecthttp://www.tricities.com/tristate/tri/news.PrintView.-content-articles-TRI-2008-03-18-0006.htmlTuesday, Mar 18, 2008 – 12:00 AM Updated: 08:32 AM By Bristol Herald Courier Staff ReportsE-mail Sunday kicked off Sunshine Week across the United States. It’s an annual effort to educate the public about the need for open government and freedom of information. In honor of the fourth annual event, the Bristol Herald…

Equal exposurehttp://www.insidenova.com/isn/news/opinion/article/equal_exposure/5475/Published: March 18, 2008Taxpayer-funded salaries are public information and the people have the right to see what anybody who works for the government makes.Some readers have criticized this newspaper for its inclusion of an online database of Prince William County teacher salaries on our Web site. Some of the criticisms have focused on the…

Local officials prefer clouds to sunshineBy Christian Trejbalhttp://www.roanoke.com/editorials/trejbal/wb/154807Sunshine Week, the special time of year when we reflect on the importance of open government for a free society, begins today.During the last 12 months, lawmakers great and small sought new ways to prevent Americans from knowing what government does in their name. Sure, there were some…

http://www.examiner.com/printa-1285117~Why_wait_to_let_the_sun_shine,_Hillary?.htmlEditorialWhy wait to let the sun shine, Hillary?The Washington DC Examiner Newspaper2008-03-18 08:00:00.0Current rank: # 2,513 of 9,532WASHINGTON –Sunshine Week — sponsored by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation — started Monday and continues through the weekend with events celebrating the…

Open-government promises too often fade into secrecyhttp://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/03/open-government.html#moreWhen candidates are seeking your vote, they can be counted on to mouth civics-book pieties about the public’s right to know what’s going on in government. They promise to hold meetings in the open, make government records readily available and generally end excessive secrecy.The three leading contenders for the…

Editorial: The Adventures of [REDACTED]Government censors take on a classic.http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/xp-154789The Freedom of Information Act empowers citizens to demand government documents. Curious people have found terrible government abuses and wonderful government successes.Yet too many elected officials prefer secrecy. They whittle away at the public’s right to know, exempting certain types of information for FOIA.They try to…

Article published Mar 16, 2008Bring on the SunshineOur View One of the most frustrating aspects of fighting for more open government is the topic’s lack of sex appeal.It’s simply boring. To most people, it simply doesn’t matter.That is, until you need something, until the fact that Virginia’s Freedom of Information law shields the facts that…

Teacher salaries and public recordPublished: March 17, 2008http://www.insidenova.com/isn/news/opinion/article/teacher_salaries_and_public_record/5447/One of the Prince William County school system’s main budget complaints in this and past years has been that teacher’s salaries are not competitive with surrounding jurisdictions.In an effort to report thoroughly and to provide taxpayers with the tools they need to evaluate this claim, we posted a…

Let the sun shine in!Published: March 16, 2008http://www.insidenova.com/isn/news/opinion/article/let_the_sun_shine_in/5438/As the song goes, “Let the sun shine, let the sun shine in.”That is what this week is all about. March 16 through 22 is Sunshine Week.This is a time when groups across the country try to start a conversation with the community about how important it is…

Why Does GA Partially Shield The Sunlight?http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/opinion/commentary.PrintView.-content-articles-RTD-2008-03-16-0086.htmlSunday, Mar 16, 2008 – 12:05 AM  By OLGA HERNANDEZTIMES-DISPATCH GUEST COLUMNISTCENTREVILLE Virginia sunshine is beautiful, but it doesn’t reach every corner of Capitol Square. Energy is needed to get our General Assembly operating entirely in a transparent light.Virginians pride ourselves on having many high-tech companies within our borders,…

Megan RhyneRhyne is associate director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government.http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/154770Earlier this month, the General Assembly passed legislation allowing the University of Virginia and Virginia State University to keep confidential much of the information related to donors to the schools’ general fund. Though donors to public university foundations enjoy complete confidentiality, donations to UVa’s…

http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/opinion/commentary.PrintView.-content-articles-RTD-2008-03-16-0082.htmlStriking Public-Private Balance Is a Challenge Sunday, Mar 16, 2008 – 12:05 AM  By MARIA J.K. EVERETTTIMES-DISPATCH GUEST COLUMNISTDuring the 2008 General Assembly session, several bills were considered to restrict citizen access to public records in order to protect the privacy of certain classes of individuals: those making donations to state universities, those donating or loaning…

Poll finds support for less secrecyMATTHEW EISLEY, Staff Writerhttp://www.newsobserver.com/news/sunshine/story/1002208.htmlA majority of North Carolina’s statewide political candidates say government agencies that illegally withhold public records should have to pay the legal fees of citizens or media organizations who sue to get the records, a new survey of the candidates shows.More than 70 percent of the candidates…

Freedom of Information exemptionshttp://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.PrintView.-content-articles-RTD-2008-03-17-0073.html Monday, Mar 17, 2008 – 12:09 AM  Virginia’s FOI Act exempts working papers and correspondence of the governor from public disclosure but allows the governor to release the material at his discretion, said Alan Gernhardt, staff attorney for the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council.Gordon Hickey, a spokesman for Gov. Timothy M.…

Governments limit e-mail accessibilityStates’ rules let them decide which ones they will turn overhttp://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news/politics/general_assembly.PrintView.-content-articles-RTD-2008-03-17-0072.html Monday, Mar 17, 2008 – 12:09 AM Updated: 03:15 PM THE ASSOCIATED PRESSWhile e-mail and text messaging are hugely popular ways to communicate, governments at all levels are often unwilling to let the public see the e-mails of elected officials.Officially, e-mails in all…

 PoliticsAudit: Bush Barely Trims FOIA BacklogBy MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, The Associated Press2008-03-16 22:44:05.0Current rank: # 8,454 of 9,095http://www.examiner.com/printa-1282371~Audit:_Bush_Barely_Trims_FOIA_Backlog.htmlWASHINGTON –Despite ordering improvements more than two years ago, President Bush has barely made a dent in the huge backlog of unanswered requests under the Freedom of Information Act.At the same time, an audit by the National Security…

Poll: More people seeing federal government as secretiveThe Associated PressNews VirginianMonday, March 17, 2008http://newsvirginian.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Common%2FMGArticle%2FPrintVersion&c=MGArticle&cid=1173354989954&image=wnv80x60.gif&oasDN=newsvirginian.comNearly nine in 10 Americans say it’s important to know presidential and congressional candidates’ positions on open government, but three out of four view the federal government as secretive, according to a survey released Sunday.Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University conducted…

The Gainesville Sunwww.GainesvilleSun.comhttp://www.gainesvillesun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080316/NEWS/803160302/1082&template=printartMar 16, 2008Shrouded in secrecyBy KIRSTEN B. MITCHELL Sun Washington BureauGovernment information as wide-ranging as the names of people who grow watermelons or olives, tax returns, and the location of endangered plants and large caves is shielded from Americans under at least 140 provisions scattered throughout federal law.Their use by federal departments to…

Text messages enter public-records debateBy Ledyard King, Gannett News Servicehttp://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireless/2008-03-15-textmsgs_N.htmWASHINGTON — Those supposedly private messages that public officials dash off on their government cellphones to friends and colleagues aren’t necessarily private after all.Courts, lawyers and states are increasingly treating these typed text messages as public documents subject to the same disclosure laws — including the…

FOIA used to expose megasiteBy Cleve WieseThe News VirginianSunday, March 16, 2008When Middlebrook farmer Betty Jo Hamilton first started hearing rumors in 2006 about a massive new industrial development planned for Augusta County, she knew her rights — and she knew how to exercise them.“If you know what questions to ask, you can sometimes figure…

Revelations found in public recordshttp://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/154773Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act presumes that all government records — unless specifically exempted — are open to the public.Every day, citizens from all walks of life use provisions of what is called FOIA (pronounced foy-a) to look at records from their governments. If you’ve ever logged onto government-hosted Web sites…

16Profiles in opening government Sunday, Mar 16, 2008 – 12:09 AM Updated: 12:16 PMBy KATHERINE CALOS AND WILL JONESTIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITERSWaldo Jaquith is a political junkie who got frustrated when he tried to keep track of the legislation introduced by his own legislators."I wanted to be notified every time they filed a bill," he said. "I…

Virginia Press Association’s editorials on HB407 (Glenn Oder’s bill allowing UVA to keep confidential the names of anonymous donors to the public side of the school’s operations) and HB1007 (Dwight Jones’ bill making all information housed at the Fusion Intelligence Center confidential).