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Posts Tagged ‘open records’
Mass. newspaper reporter catches city employees burning public records
A reporter from The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass. caught city employees burning reams of public records, all without approval from the state. Old purchase orders, payroll records and utility bills, along with a handful of other documents, went up in smoke. The city’s public works commissioner “emphasized that all of the records burned in…
Read MoreBehind the Story: The Boston Globe’s 4-year battle for secret settlement records
Boston Globe reporter Todd Wallack thought it would be a simple, short-term project to look into settlements made between the state of Massachusetts and some of its employees. After all, he’d done the same thing in California, uncovering an agreement between UC Davis and one of its administrators to avert a nasty lawsuit. But the…
Read MoreAmid drug scandal, Toronto officials keep secret hundreds of emails
The Toronto Sun is appealing a decision by the City of Toronto to withhold hundreds of emails sent by staff members of beleaguered Mayor Rob Ford. The paper requested copies of emails sent and received by Ford’s former senior staffers around the time the mayor’s crack video scandal broke last year. From the Sun: The…
Read MoreVirginia Supreme Court overturns blackout, opens public access to audio recordings of oral arguments
Members of the Virginia Supreme Court have a New Year’s Resolution — become more transparent. Starting this year, members of the public will finally have access to audio recordings of oral arguments. The recordings were once public, but installation of new recording equipment in January 2008 changed that. As the Alexandria Gazette Packet first reported last summer,…
Read MoreMuzzling the Freedom of Information Act
The federal government is making it increasingly difficult, and prohibitively expensive, for journalists to get files that agencies want to keep secret, despite President Obama’s pledge of transparency, IRE President David Cay Johnston writes for Newsweek. That’s bad news for authors, editors, producers, writers, and publishers, as well as anyone else interested in democratic government.…
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