News

Boulder voters to weigh limited executive session authority for city council

Boulder voters will see three city issues on their November ballot: a three-year, 0.3 percent sales tax for "community, culture and safety," executive session authority limited to the creation of a city electric utility, and public broadband authority ...

Legal experts: Pueblo council’s email meeting was illegal

Two nationally recognized experts on open meetings and freedom of information laws confirmed this week that three Pueblo City Council members engaged in an illegal meeting over email with a county employee ...

State of Colorado at fault for omission of deadly Arapahoe High shooting from school violence data

Colorado Department of Education officials said Thursday that the glaring omission of a fatal shooting at Arapahoe High School from campus violence data stemmed from a processing error by the state, not a failure to report by the school district ...

Opinion: EPA’s Gina McCarthy broke the law by destroying official text messages and should resign

Text messages sent on a private telephone between Maureen McDonnell, wife of Bob McDonnell, and businessman Johnnie Williams are key evidence in the corruption trial of the former Virginia governor, according to the Washington Post. New Jersey Gov ...

FOIA Improvement Act of 2014

The FOIA Improvement Act of 2014 (S.2520) (“FIA”) sets out to make various tweaks to a key federal access to information statute, the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”). Below, I overview some of the most significant changes ...

In Utah: Preserve transparent government

Laws such as the federal Freedom of Information Act and the Utah Government Records Access and Management Act were designed as ways to keep the things government entities do in the sunlight. The idea is that people should have access to what their go ...

City website a good first step toward government transparency

Fulfilling a campaign promise by Mayor Betsy Price, Fort Worth is jumping on the open data government bandwagon. Last month, the city launched an online portal that provides direct access to a wellspring of public information. Open data sites like ...

Pennsylvania’s open records director sitting in limbo

The woman hired six years ago to oversee sweeping changes to Pennsylvania's open records law is waiting to see if she still has a job. More than three months since her six-year term expired as executive director of the Office of Open Records, Terry Mutchler doesn't know whether Gov. Tom Corbett will reappoint her to a second term. read more ...

Montana, Bozeman launch online data portal for public information

Bozeman has joined the state of Montana’s open government push as the first city to publish local databases on a state website. The website, data.mt.gov, contains 36 datasets. It includes all public information about the facilities leased by th ...

Director of the State Committee on Open Government (NY) holds forum on FOIL

More than 40 people attended a forum by Executive Director of the State Committee on Open Government Robert Freeman Thursday, July 31. During the meeting, Freeman briefly explained the intricacies of the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) as well as t ...