Transparency News 5/5/17
Friday, May 5, 2017
We have 50 (out of 200) tickets left for our FOIA and records management workshop on May 17. Registration will close Monday, May 15.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/foia-and-records-management-an-in-person-tutorial-tickets-33890916644
National Stories
Last year, Seattle-based activist Phil Mocek requested text messages sent by mayor Ed Murray to his staff. Unsurprisingly, the mayor’s press team responded fairly quickly - albeit in a fairly surprisingly way. Yes, the Mayor’s PR team apparently felt that the best way to do this would be to pull up the text messages on the phone and then place it on a flatbed scanner, which credit where it’s due, did produce a responsive record. With agencies often going to absurd lengths to avoid fulfilling a request, it’s nice to see one going to absurd lengths to actually fulfill one.
MuckRock
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed legislation Thursday that requires a “cooling-off period” when open-records disputes reach the point where litigation is being considered. With House Bill 17-1177, someone who is denied records under the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) must wait 14 days to challenge the denial in court. During that time, the records custodian for a government entity must speak with the requester in person or by phone in an attempt to resolve the matter.
Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition
A South Florida police officer has pleaded guilty to his role in an identity theft scheme that involved a confidential law enforcement driver's license database.
McClatchy
An ingenious new Roosevelt Institute study on the influence of money on politicsbegins with an incredible story about how the world actually works. The Roosevelt study focuses on an issue where politicians were repeatedly forced to go on the record — House votes on the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill — and Democratic representatives who were representing the same district over several terms and would seemingly have little reason to change their minds.
The Intercept
The Cambridge, Massachusetts, Police Department refused to make public its policy on the use of force, following a public records request. State Police declined to provide a Central Massachusetts blogger with records in a more than six-decades-old case of unsolved murder. And a Quincy resident who had filed a police report was denied a copy of it. Each of the police departments cited, at least in part, an exemption to the public records law that allows agencies to withhold investigatory materials that, if disclosed, “would probably prejudice the possibility of effective law enforcement.”
Boston Globe
A Muslim civil rights group sued the Department of Homeland Security for slow-walking its FOIA request for Trump administration policies on border searches of electronic devices in the possession of people whom agents “perceived to be Muslim.” According to the May 2 lawsuit in Federal Court, U.S. citizens and other travelers arriving on international flights whom Customs and Border Protection agents “perceived to be Muslim” also had their electronic devices searched, either after disclosing their passwords, or through electronic duplication of their content.
Courthouse News Service
Editorials/Columns
The firing of Dana Bedden — or as the board calls it, a mutually agreed separation — was not for cause. What little stated reason we’ve been given cites such vague platitudes as philosophical differences and we want to go in a different direction. Thou shalt not disparage seems to be the main commandment of this document, which takes nondisclosure in the name of confidentiality too far. “ ‘You’re not going to criticize somebody’ doesn’t mean you can’t set out facts where expectations were met and where expectations not necessarily failed, but diverged,” said Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. “Disparagement, or whatever the term was, is to me sort of finger-pointing rather than just laying out facts of what led to this departure.”
Michael Paul Williams, Richmond Times-Dispatch
For two weeks now, members of the Richmond School Board have maintained an inexcusable silence regarding their decision to give superintendent Dana Bedden the boot. Well, now they have an excuse. Sort of. The separation agreement the two parties hashed out stipulates that neither can publicly criticize the other. Think of it as a no-fault-in-public divorce, or something like that. Discretion in personnel matters makes sense — but only up to a point. The School Board’s action is the equivalent of Congress impeaching and convicting the president — but not telling the public why. The public wouldn’t stand for that. It shouldn’t stand for this, either.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
To quote one of baseball’s greatest philosophers, Yogi Berra, “It ain't over till it's over.” The fight to stop what appears to be a scheme to publicly finance a stadium that already failed to raise private financing from people in the business of assessing risk “ain’t over.” This citizens group is looking at the levers and knobs available to share more information with a public relatively uninformed about the details of the stadium deal. They are also looking at the process to ensure those involved have an accurate understanding of broader community sentiments instead of listening to a few who show up in matching t-shirts and hats.
Al Alborn, Inside NOVA
