Ooooh, sneaky.

I’ve heard of contracts with language that would seem to prohibit the contents of the contract from being subject to FOIA laws, but I’m still sad to hear about them circulating through the Wisconsin government.

It seems fairly obvious to me that you can’t put wording into a contract that would break any other law (for example, ‘by the terms of this contract between the Parking Enforcement Division of Madison and XYZ Towing, XYZ Towing gets to keep any cars they find parked on the wrong side of the street’*), so why would union contractors and the city think that they can break the Open Records law? As the Journal Times puts it:

Workers and citizens could lose fundamental rights and protections based solely on negotiations. That’s twaddle.

ADDED: A similar issue is raising it’s head in California.

ADDED AGAIN: More about the bill in California from PolitickerCA.

*Totally made up example (in case it wasn’t obvious!).

I have always hated jogging with the passion of a thousand suns. Lately however, its simplicity, the lack of equipment, and ability to be performed anywhere at any time has really begun to appeal to me. Also, it’s free. So, I’m giving it a shot - yesterday I ran two whole miles! Well, I walked for a little bit of it, but it was really hot out. Hopefully I’ll be doing more soon.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a link round-up (I’m still pissed about this), so there are tons of good blog posts about open records out there.

First, a couple of posts about the sheriff of Maricopa County, AZ, Joe Arpaio. This guy does not have a good track record of be responsive to citizen requests, and now Valley Fever is reporting that Arpaio’s thugs threaten to arrest a New Times reporter for looking at public records. On the other side of the fence, Seeing Red AZ thinks that they are Wastin’ away again in Agendaville.

Meanwhile, out in Maryland the folks at the Pokomoke Tattler are wondering Countdown to the End of Chief Ervins Contract…What’s Going to Happen? Read this post for a nice illustration of what a citizen can learn by examining public records.

In Tennessee, a Bredesen Administration Flack Continues To Defy Open Records Law according to Bill Hobbs.com. I should follow Bill’s example and continue to follow up on my most recent FOIA request rather than just letting it languish…

Finally, The Delaware Curmudgeon looks at the case of a woman who filed a request with the IRS back in 1974 (before I was even born if you can believe it!): FOIA - Thirty Years and Still Fighting. I hope that she keeps pushing — if it’s been fought this hard for this long, there must be something interesting in the IRS’s attic.

So, 29 days after I asked the Dane County 911 Center for internal e-mails mentioning the Brittany Zimmermann incident, I received this reply. It spills onto the third page, so if you don’t want to read it all I understand (blogs have spoiled me for reading Walls Of Text), and I’m pulling out the interesting parts here.

First sign of trouble: I made the request directly to Joe Norwick, since the Dane County 911 website does not list an open records custodian (side note, the information currently on that website has been revised as of May 28, 2008 and looks much better now than it did a month ago), and my request was answered by Marcia MacKenzie, Dane County Corporation Counsel. Lawyers already?

Next sign of trouble: As the public documents that I am seeking access to are e-mails, that is the format I requested to receive them in. However, Marcia MacKenzie wants to print off all 116 pages responsive to my request ($0.25/page = 29.00) and mail them to me ($4.80) for a total of $33.80. Not a lot of money, but that’s not the point. This seems to me to be a violation of statute 19.35(3)(a) which states that fees “may not exceed the actual, necessary and direct cost of reproduction and transcription of the record”. It is neither actual or necessary to print off and mail these documents - e-mail will work just fine. I presume that the desire to print off the documents stems from

Yet more trouble: the desire to redact information from the publics eye. While I understand and am sympathetic to keeping details of an on-going police investigation on a need to know basis (until the investigation is closed, of course), I have difficulty imagining how 911 Center internal e-mails might affect the search for Brittney Zimmermann’s murderer.

According to this letter, Marcia MacKenzie has

“considered all relevant factors and balanced the public interests in disclosure versus the public interests in non-disclosure and have carefully reviewed all relevent statutory exemptions. It is my conclusion that the public interest in non-disclosure of the redacted or withheld information far outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

Thank goodness there is someone in county government looking out for the poor, stupid public that wouldn’t know how to handle information if they ever got any!

Ugh, I’m starting to create my own Wall of Text here, and frankly I am too annoyed to continue for the moment. More when I get the taste of bile out of my throat.

Lake Havasu in Arizona appears to be having some difficulties too.

I sure hope that no one at the Dane County 911 center has been destroying or altering public records in order to hide evidence of wrong doing. I should be able to tell you soon, since I finally received a reply to my open records request regarding internal e-mails on the Brittney Zimmermann case.

Read the letter I received (helpfully e-mailed with no subject line, thus landing it in my spam box for a few days) here. I haven’t read it thoroughly yet myself; come back for my thoughts soon!

This might be letting my girly flag fly a little higher than usual, but this looks sooo fun to me: Sex and the City Night at the Majestic. If you want to see me giggly after a cosmo or two, you know where to find me!

Thanks for the heads up to Dane 101.

Now for the open record links:

Sunshine in Missouri asks Cloudy days, don’t the sun ever shine anymore? And it would seem that she is right… the open records scene in MO has not made many improvements over the last several years.

My interest in farm subsidies was sparked after reading Michael Pollan’s books The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. Now it turns out that the USDA wants to keep as many details surrounding farm subsidies out of the public eye as possible. Mulch has the details: Farm Bill Blocks Court-Ordered Release Of Subsidy Program Data Under FOIA.

GRRLAW wants us to know What law enforcement does not want you to know about Iowa’s open records. Namely,

“Why then do law enforcement agencies refuse to provide copies of police reports to the general public when a request is made? The simple answer is because they get away with it.”

And finally, this posting from Angry Zen Master made me laugh: The Superhero Registration Act’s Fatal Flaw. Funny the stuff that can turn up in a news alert. (Anyone else love comic books? I love comic books.)

For once there is an open records issue that I am somewhat ambivalent toward. Generally, it is very easy for me to say ‘if it was created in the public realm, then the public deserves access to it’, but I find myself sitting on the fence with this story.

According to the Post-Cresent, “A former Kimberly High School basketball coach is continuing a nearly two-month battle for access to documents that may have contributed to his dismissal.” At first blush, I say ‘absolutely, give him the records!’. If there was back room dealing that lost him his job he deserves to know it. But, upon reading further, I see that he has indeed received the documents that he requested. It is the fact that names were redacted from the letters he received that has led to the public records battle. Hm, are those names really germane to what the individuals (not public officials mind, but parents in the school district) had to say about him? The question of whether or not private citizen’s communications with public officials are a matter of public record is a hard puzzle to solve, and in fact, has not yet been solved to anyone’s satisfaction to date.

John Miron has a point though when he says that “Those submitting these letters are not a protected class and have no ‘confidentiality’ rights. The identity of the authors is relevant information that I am entitled to.” And based on that, I am forced to agree with him. As matters stand, people in communication with public bodies know (or should know) that public bodies are subject to FOIA, and they ought to proceed under the assumption that one day their communications could be made public.

So, I’m back to ‘absolutely, give him the records!’ and don’t redact them. The possibility that he might just be seeking the names of those in the community that don’t like him is not relevant to the greater issue of the publics’ right to public records.

One of the blogs I read everyday, State Sunshine & Open Records, found what might be the coolest use of FOIA yet. A British band performed a song in front of surveillance cameras, then sent (the British equivalent of) FOIA requests for the footage, and assembled a music video from it! Neat.

Here’s the video:

The music’s not bad either — way to go to The Get Out Clause!

… but Badger Blogger has got the goods! I just knew there would be some interesting e-mail about how the Brittany Zimmermann 911 call went down.

HT Forward Our Motto.

Nothing yet. Unfortunately, the Wisconsin Open Records statute does not identify a time in which a public entity must respond to records requests by, stating only “as soon as practicable and without delay”. Not surprisingly, the 911 Center has not seen it to be “as soon as practicable” to respond to my request for their internal communications about the incident yet.

It’s not like I want heads to roll over something that it’s too late to fix, but I’m really, really interested to hear what sort of repercussions there are for the 911 dispatcher who failed to dispatch anyone, and what is on the table to make sure this sort of thing never happens again. I’ll keep updating here as things develop.

Meanwhile, County Executive Kathleen Falk has acknowledged that “the system didn’t work like it should” for Brittany Zimmermann. Um, no kidding.

H/T Fraley.

When I was looking for some good blog posts about open records around the country today, I noticed what might be turning out to be a new trend: the Friday FOIA’s. I guess I jumped the gun by filing a FOIA request yesterday…

First, from A Chicago Blog we have Friday FOIA: Jim Thompson’s Expense Report, where Michael Van Winkle writes about a request he’s made to figure out if Jim Thompson has any of his expenses reimbursed by the Illinois Sports Facility Authority.

Then there is FOIA Friday - May 2, 2008 brought by Maggie Thurber of Thurber’s Thoughts. Here, she gives us a couple of updates on FOIA projects that have been going on in her area.

That’s all I found (so far) on Friday FOIA blogging, but I think it’s a great idea and hope to see more entries in the coming weeks.

UPDATE: Today (5/6/08 ) I found another Friday FOIAer! Entropic Memes offers up Friday FOIA Fun: Intelligence, a more federally focused posting.

For other good blog posts on open records recently we have Freedom of Information – Let’s Start Looking beyond the Law from People, Places, Deliberation. I really enjoyed this post since it calls transparent government laws one of the defining features of a civilized society.

And here’s one where I just really get a kick out of the title: Open Government can be so pesky from Young Philly Politics. Yeah, I get the feeling that that’s how all too many public officials view it.