Transparency News, 1/27/2023
Friday
January 27, 2023
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from around the country
VCOG's annual legislative chart of FOIA and access-related bills
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Thursday issued an executive order standardizing the public records request process for state agencies. The order requires all executive branch agencies to create records request pages on their websites and adhere to new guidelines for response times and fees. Alabama has been the worst state in the nation for compliance with open records laws, according to a University of Arizona journalism study from 2019. The laws are also some of the vaguest in the nation, Alabama Press Association Executive Director Felicia Mason said. Still, while Ivey's order may not mean more requests are fulfilled, it does add more specificity to existing law, which is a step in the right direction, Mason said.
Montgomery Advertiser
Footage of the attack on former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband will be released to the public after a judge on Wednesday denied prosecutors’ request to keep it secret. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Stephen M. Murphy ruled there was no reason to keep the footage secret, especially after prosecutors played it in open court during a preliminary hearing last month, according to Thomas R. Burke, a San Francisco-based lawyer who represented The Associated Press and a host of other news agencies in their attempt to access the evidence.
Associated Press
Much of the federal coronavirus relief money went to help hospitals, assistance programs, and counties in New Jersey recover and rebuild after the pandemic. The state government also used more than half a million dollars to buy SUVs to carry Gov. Phil Murphy and state officials around the state. The expenditures were revealed in a memo the state Treasury Department recently sent to state lawmakers detailing 46 ways New Jersey allocated millions from the $6.24 billion in COVID-19 relief money it received from the U.S. government.
Governing
editorials & columns
"Those pushing it will claim, as they always do, that it’s a pin prick, not a loophole. You’ll never even know it’s there."
It often begins small — a modest proposal to carve out a miniscule exemption to Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act. Those pushing it will claim, as they always do, that it’s a pin prick, not a loophole. You’ll never even know it’s there. It is necessary, they’ll contend, and without this one measly exemption in the state’s open government law, that business will be impossible, everything will grind to a halt, nothing will get done. You don’t want that to happen, do you? Why would you stand in the way of progress? Curious about how the state FOIA ended up riddled with more than 170 exemptions? Follow the progress of House Bill 2394 as it winds its way through the state legislature in the coming days and weeks. It should be informative. Better that this bill be narrowly tailored and protective only of financial disclosures, if that’s the concern. Advocates of the measure may be well-intentioned and seeking to solve a practical concern, but each new loophole is another swing of the ax against a law that is weakened by every successive blow.
The Virginian-Pilot via Yahoo! News
I was asked repeatedly when Virginia would change the law that requires local governments to advertise legal notices in newspapers. It’s not that the local governments didn’t want to advertise. They simply didn’t want to advertise in newspapers, when they knew that print circulation is declining. Some of the county officials wanted to advertise on local online news sites, which they felt had wider circulation (and lower rates). I couldn’t help them with that, but maybe state Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Rockingham County, and Del. Patrick Hope, D-Arlington, can. They’ve introduced a bill that would allow local governments to do just that – to advertise their legal notices on local online news sites that meet certain criteria.
Dwayne Yancey, Cardinal News
