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Access to Records

California court rules Public Records Act not cover GIS database

donal brown June 2, 2011

A California appeals court ruled that a public agency does not have to provide public access to  a geographic information system or GIS database under the state’s  Public Records Act. The court denied the Sierra Club’s bid to make public the Orange County Landbase, a parcel map showing over 640,000 parcels with street addresses and names of owners. The county wanted $375,000 for the entire Landbase system. In their opinion, the court wrote that the

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California: Sacramento County ordered to turn over pension data

donal brown May 12, 2011

A California appeals court has ordered Sacramento County’s retirement system to release pension data to the Sacramento Bee. The Bee and the First Amendment Coalition had brought a lawsuit to reveal data about the pension benefits ncluding the names and benefits of individual members. Said Joyce Terhaar of The Bee, “It’s part of our mission to ensure there’s public scrutiny of government spending. We’ve been reporting for several years that local governments are facing higher

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Access to records: Court reporters’ ownership of transcripts challenged

donal brown April 26, 2011

The California Legislative Analyst’s Office is recommending phasing out court reporters in favor of electronic transcription. The Office thinks it will save the state $113 million a year but studies have raised doubts that any savings would occur. Some open government advocates are also challenging the status quo by questioning the benefits of allowing court reporters intellectual property rights to court transcripts ergo the right to collect fees for copies thereby limiting access. -db From

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Loading up costs of public records requests defeats access

donal brown April 25, 2011

In a guest commentary in The Salt Lake Tribune, Brigham Young professor Joel Campbell says that a proposed new public record request law in Utah would hurt public access to records. “[The law]…would not only pay fees to cover the ‘actual cost’ of providing the records, but it also added new charges for overhead and administration. That would have undone Utah GRAMA’s current and narrowly drawn ‘actual cost’ provision, which is among the best in

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‘Crowd-sourcing’ FOIA requests – political ploy or quest for openness?

FAC April 4, 2011

A conservative political group has taken a cue from WikiLeaks and is soliciting supporters to post Freedom of Information Act documents online – as long as they hold the Obama administration up to critical scrutiny. Steven J. Law, president of Crossroads GPS, told the New York Times he hoped the “crowd-sourcing” strategy would reveal the administration’s poor record of compliance with FOIA requests, among other things. But unlike WikiLeaks, he said, Wikicountability would avoid publishing “classified,

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