by Attorney Mark Dumas
Freedom of Information Law
How not to use your city email address
Sep 10th
This week’s freedom of information tip should be pretty obvious, but maybe not obvious enough.
Here it is: don’t use your government email address to send racy emails to your girlfriend or boyfriend.
Why do I bring this up? Well, a Washington official did just that and it cost his town $5,000 for an independent investigation. Worse yet, Bob Sternoff, the guilty Kirkland City Council member, sent some of the emails while the city council was in session.
Maybe playing solitaire during sessions isn’t quite as bad after all…
[h/t: Open Government Blog]
Record retention another concern 4 txts
May 5th
I’ve written before about text messages as public records. We know that text messages are — at least in some circumstances — public records under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act and that the same logic would apply under Connecticut law.
Now it looks like the issue is spreading South, where a the city of Deltona, Florida has banned text messaging during public meetings because of concern about FOI laws and records retention. The FOI Advocate points out that this concern has some merit, since sometimes the only way to obtain text messages — even for a municipality — is by issuing a subpoena to the service provider. Since some text messages are deleted automatically within a few days, that means that records could be gone before a city could even obtain a copy.
Federal courts vote to provide more information on PACER about sealed cases
Apr 3rd
About a month ago, I wrote about Senator Lieberman’s efforts to eliminate the 8¢ per page fees for downloading records from PACER, the federal courts public record system. There haven’t been any changes in fees yet, but the federal courts have made one change relevant to Connecticut. Thanks to a recent vote of the federal Judicial Conference, it will be easier to find out about sealed cases.
Here’s what the federal court systems’ blog has to say about the rule change:
The Conference, acting at its March 17 meeting, voted to have Internet lists of civil and criminal cases in district courts include a case number and generic name, such as “Sealed vs. Sealed,” for each sealed case.
Such lists for each of the 94 district courts are generated by the Judiciary’s Case Management/Electronic Case Files system and are accessible through the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system.
Currently, PACER lists of sequentially numbered district court cases skip the sealed cases, but a member of the public could query the missing case number directly and would see a message stating that the case “is under seal.”
The Conference in 2007 strongly encouraged district courts to change the message that PACER users receive when querying a sealed case-from “this case does not exist” to “this case is under seal.” The latest Conference action is consistent with and further implements the 2007 Conference policy by providing the public with information to confirm the existence of a sealed case.
The Conference left it up to the individual district courts to determine what additional information about sealed cases, such as the initials of the assigned judge or the date of filing, should be available to the public.
What is the best way for your city or town to reduce open government compliance costs?
Mar 24th
The good folks over at the Open-Government Blog recently raised a very good point about how municipalities can reduce the costs associated with Freedom of Information requests.
So what’s the key factor to reducing the costs of FOI requests? A government’s openness and transparency. If citizens don’t trust their government, they file more FOI requests.
Bainbridge Island, Washington provides a compelling example of this point in action. Here’s what a recent article from the Kitsup Sun has to say about records requests in Bainbridge Island.
Island residents’ growing desire to peer at the inner workings of their city government is slowing the municipal machine.
In search of financial documents, e-mail correspondence, development permits and sometimes archival materials spanning decades, residents made more than 630 public records requests to the city last year.
The number and scope of requests are becoming a workload and financial burden disproportionate to the city’s size and shrinking budget, city managers say.
“We’re at five times the number of requests of comparable cities,” City Attorney Paul McMurray said. “It’s a huge number of requests for a city of 22,000.”
And the politicians and citizens of Bainbridge Island know what has caused the recent spike in FOI requests: mistrust of local government.
The reason for the flood of requests is clear, Mayor Darlene Kordonowy said.
“We have lost trust from the community,” she said.
While islanders have built a reputation for strong involvement in local government, they’ve also earned a bit of infamy for an equally robust distrust for it.
Controversial land-use or public-financing decisions often spur requests for information. If requests hit roadblocks or delays along the way, distrust only grows.
“My feeling is that the city created this by not being more forthcoming,” said Rod Stevens, who has filed about a dozen records requests with the city. “We don’t have transparent government. People raise a lot of questions, but neither the mayor or the administration respond to them.”
The result for city is more administrative work with higher costs while at the same time staff is being reduced due to the recession. The clear lesson that we can learn from Bainbridge Island is that the best way to keep freedom of information compliance costs down is to have an open government that people trust.
Two weeks until the 2009 Connecticut Freedom of Information Conference
Mar 23rd
The annual Connecticut Freedom of Information Conference will be held on April 9th in Rocky Hill and this year’s topic is the management of electronic records. More information is available at the Freedom of Information Commission‘s website. The registration deadline is March 26th.