February 1st, 2005 | by Derek Willis | published in Public Records
Clark Kauffman of the Des Moines Register has an alarming story about the sale of public records: “The head of the Iowa Department of Public Safety says his agency is prepared to consider whether it can make crime records more readily available to the public if The Des Moines Register makes a financial donation to [...]
January 19th, 2005 | by Derek Willis | published in Public Records
The Salem Statesman-Journal reports that “Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s office has billed the Statesman Journal $2,084 to respond to a public-records request for e-mails and other correspondence between the governor’s staff and former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt’s consulting firm. The governor’s office provided more than 1,500 pages of documents for review. The newspaper used the e-mails and [...]
December 1st, 2004 | by Derek Willis | published in Public Records
Marc Perrusquia of the Memphis Commercial Appeal reports on the results of a public records survey by the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government: In Nashville, the state capital, police say they need $33 to produce a report. Law enforcement officers have a similar message in Jackson, Huntingdon, McMinnville, Jefferson City, Greeneville and many other burgs [...]
November 22nd, 2004 | by Derek Willis | published in Public Records
Among the papers presented at this year’s AEJMC annual conference was one co-authored by my friend Charles Davis of the University of Missouri on access to public university foundation records. The paper makes a solid case for more disclosure: If the chilling effect on donors is a less than compelling argument for closure, then the [...]
October 27th, 2004 | by Derek Willis | published in DIY, Public Records
Richard D. Walton of the Indianapolis Star and Brendan O’Shaughnessy of The Times of Northwest Indiana, in cooperation with six other Indiana newspapers, judged the availability of public records in the state, finding that “government officials routinely broke or skirted Indiana’s open records law” during the exercise. “Reporters and copy editors fanned out across the [...]