Transparency Watch
Draft bill would create single portal for records requests
Bloomberg reports today that two lawmakers in the U.S. House plan to release a draft bill that would create a single portal for federal records requests. According to draft legislation obtained by Bloomberg, the bill would put the burden on the fedreal government to prove why information should be withheld if requested under the Freedom of…
Read MoreMuch judicial secrecy in Consumer Protection Safety Commission case
Two years ago, the federal Consumer Protection Safety Commission launched saferproducts.gov, an online tool for consumers to review complaints and warnings about hazardous products. Since it launched, Fair Warning reports, the first lawsuit by a business attempting to conceal a complaint is “blazing new trails in judicial secrecy.” “Thanks to closed-door hearings, sealed records and…
Read MorePublic records in Arlington County, Va., come at high price
The Arlington Gazette Packet reports that public records in Arlington come at a high price compared to neighboring areas in northern Virginia. Throughout Virginia, access to open records remains spotty. The State Integrity project, which ranks states based on their level of transparency, placed Virginia 47 and gave it a failing grade. Now, Michael Lee…
Read MoreUsing DocumentCloud, FOIA Project to track requests, responses by agency
The FOIA Project has documented more evidence of what its staff calls apparent failure of the Obama administration to fulfill transparency promises, and an upcoming expansion of the project could be a step toward establishing definitive evidence regarding the administration’s level of transparency. At the end of December, the DocumentCloud-powered venture from the Transactional…
Read MoreSan Antonio withholds employee identifiers, with backing from Attorney General
By Joe Yerardi Back in September, I filed a public records request with the City of San Antonio asking for their last five years of payroll data. When I received the responsive records earlier this month, I was surprised to find that the data did not include employee identification numbers. As any data journalist worth…
Read MoreCourt dismisses FOIA lawsuit, upholds secrecy in drone killings of U.S. citizens
A federal court in Manhattan yesterday dismissed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit involving both The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union, who each sued the United States Department of Justice over records regarding the targeted drone killing of U.S. citizens Anwar Al-Awlaki and Samir Khan and Al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman in the…
Read MoreIn Pennsylvania, culture of secrecy, Right to Know Law remain work in progress
Pennsylvania’s records laws were for many years among the most restrictive in the country, and though the letter of the law has since improved drastically, freedom of information advocates say the spirit of the law has lagged. Pennsylvania overhaul of its Right to Know Law four years ago was a major victory for government transparency,…
Read MoreOutrageous cost estimates for open records requests
This past week, journalists on the NICAR Listserv began discussing the most outrageous price quotes they’d received for open records requests. Canadian journalist David Weisz started the thread as research for a presentation he was giving to the Information Resource Management Association of Canada on the state of data journalism. “Having filed ATI requests myself and hearing the horror…
Read MoreSeeking communications between the White House and Department of Labor
Transparency Watch is an occasional series from IRE tracking the fight for open records. If you have a story about a quest for public records you’d like to share, email us at web@ire.org. This past summer, I reported for The Oregonian on the issue of child labor on farms, specifically the health and safety risks of such work and…
Read MoreState of New Jersey sues itself over release of records
Mark Lagerkvist of New Jersey Watchdog reports that the State of New Jersey is suing itself over a possible release of records to the website. Lagerkvist reports that on Oct. 15, the state attorney general filed a motion seeking to stop the state Government Records Council from reviewing files, which on Aug. 31 had ordered state…
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