The Scoop

The Journal News in suburban New York recently published a story about handgun permit records, reporting that “police have lost track of thousands of registered handguns because there’s no system in place to keep tabs on the weapons of state pistol permit holders who die.” The paper requested an electronic copy of state pistol records [...]

This week is Sunshine Week, when newspapers draw attention to the importance of access to public records through editorial cartoons, columns and news stories. Some notable pieces:

The AP’s assessment that “many federal agencies fall far short of the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, repeatedly failing to meet reporting deadlines while citizens wait ever [...]

Ken Armstrong, Justin Mayo and Steve Miletich of the Seattle Times have the first in a series of reports on sealed court cases in Washington State. “Since 1990, at least 420 civil suits have been sealed in their entirety. That means everything - from the complaint, which says who’s accused of what, to the judgment, [...]

Mark Pitsch of the Louisville Courier-Journal used Kentucky’s Open Records Act to obtain emails showing that “less than three months before the state hiring investigation began, Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s deputy chief of staff and the transportation personnel director confided to each other in e-mails that laws may have been broken.” The state’s Attorney General, who [...]

Rick Anderson and Chuck Taylor of the Seattle Weekly have the tale of one man’s public records fight against King County, Washington, officials:
Armen Yousoufian, 57, who once helped build missiles for Boeing, had to go where no man had gone before. He ran an eight-year gauntlet of closed King County government doors, bureaucratic roadblocks, and [...]