Making public records easier for the public to access: The House Finance Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved a measure to limit the amount of money state and local government agencies can charge when documents are requested in the public interest. The bill now goes to the full House for consideration.

Linda Mensch was killed in a hit-and-run crash while leaving the Garfield Park Conservatory in August 2021. Investigators quickly released a photo of the van that hit her as well as its license plate. But for reasons Chicago police refuse to explain – they would not even question the vehicle’s registered owner.

It’s a pattern found in case after case and crash after crash.

Court case addresses question: When a person requests an electronic copy of a public electronic record under the Kansas Open Records Act, must a public agency provide that copy in electronic format? The answer is “yes.”

The order requires all executive branch agencies to post a public records page on their websites that includes a records request form. It requires agencies to designate a public records coordinator to help people with requests. The order requires agencies to acknowledge receipt of a request within two business days. The order sets deadlines for when agencies must provide substantive responses depending on the nature of requests.

CSPRA.org Insight: The following article is about a decision by a court in California with which we disagree.  This decision will allow public officials to hide important information from the public without adequate cause. 

The Legislature wrote Iowa’s public records law 55 years ago, and one of the tenets of the statute was the belief people deserve to know how state and local governments spend their tax money. Another important concept in the law is that fees for copies of government records must be reasonable and cannot exceed the actual cost of providing the documents.

That brings us today to Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, where administrators appear not to grasp what “reasonable” means.

“I lived in a condo on the east side of Collins Avenue, and now I live on the west side of Collins Avenue. I can relate to and understand the challenges of the city because I work here, my children go to school here, I buy my groceries here and I worship here,” she wrote.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reviewed almost two dozen lawsuits filed in the past five years that accused San Diego or other local jurisdictions of failing to comply with the state open-records law by claiming unjustified exemptions or denying there were any documents to release.

Michael O’Brien, an attorney with Parsons Behle & Latimer, has represented The Tribune for years. He said having a lawyer in the room during the appeals process levels the playing field for journalists. Every government entity that Tribune reporters try to get records from, O’Brien pointed out, has access to in-house lawyers, city attorneys or help from the attorney general’s office.

The impact of these court victories has, at times, been broad in scope, helping shape laws and change city policies in favor of greater government transparency. But the Local Legal Initiative attorneys’ work has not been limited to the filings they have submitted to courts or the arguments they have made before judges.

Three nonprofits accused the judiciary in 2016 of overcharging to review and download records through the service known as PACER, an acronym for Public Access to Court Electronic Records. The agreement, which must be approved by a federal judge in Washington, mainly would refund up to $350 for fees paid between April 2010 and May 2018. Users who paid more during that period would receive an additional share of the remaining funds.

But on Wednesday, after a six-year legal saga, a federal judge entered an order that set in legal concrete an agreement between this news service and the Florida e-filing authority that returns public access to new complaints when they cross the virtual counter, bringing the state courts back in line with how they used to be in the time of paper.

But in practice, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s site is more byzantine than inviting. It lists permit applications from across the state on separate pages for air pollution, industrial and hazardous waste, municipal solid waste, radioactive materials, underground injections and water pollution. And to see a project’s location, readers must open an attached PDF, which also lists proposed pollutants like “NOX,” “PM/PM10,” “VOC” and “H2S.”

"Over and over again, the city engaged in a pattern of hiding information, first about the underlying incident and then about how it handled the request for records," said attorney Matt Topic, who is part of the legal team that sued for the materials. They're now seeking penalties, which are allowed under Illinois' public records law to discourage violations.

The murder of Las Vegas reporter Jeff German sent shockwaves through the community after a county official, Robert Telles, was arrested.

Telles was the most recent in a long line of public officials held to account by German, who fearlessly targeted his coverage from the perspective of the underdog, those who knew him said.

Block Club Chicago, founded in 2018 by Shamus Toomey (former managing editor of DNAinfo Chicago, and metro editor at the Chicago Sun-Times), Jen Sabella (former deputy editor at DNAinfo Chicago), and Stephanie Lulay (former senior editor at DNAinfo Chicago), focuses their work around reporters who are assigned to, and often based in, specific neighborhoods, rather than on topical beats.

In a 4-3 ruling, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that a community group was not entitled to recover legal fees from the city of Waukesha under the Wisconsin Open Records Act after its lawsuit seeking access to a draft city contract ultimately prompted officials to make the document public, but without a court order forcing their hand.

According to the ruling, Leonard issued a CORA request to the business district seeking “contracts with those who performed the construction and consulting work for the installation of the public improvements paid for by the District” and “invoices and payments made to Nor’wood and InterQuest Marketplace, LLC, or any related entity of either, for work or services performed on behalf of the District.”

The court’s holding that the reporter was entitled to bring his lawsuit challenging the non-response has far-reaching consequences and has been hailed as a major victory for transparency in California.

“It’s not real-time information and it has little utility for the future,” he said.

The database does not show disciplinary cases from the officers’ own police departments or sheriff’s offices. It also does not show cases until after the state hearing wraps up, often after the officer has already left the force.