Once upon a time, Gov. Ella T. Grasso signed into law Connecticut’s pioneering Freedom of Information Act, which established an independent Freedom of Information Commission. This state was in the forefront of the post-Watergate movement for op ...

Locally elected officials are expected to conduct public business in the open, and not behind closed doors. And any abuse of closed-door executive sessions represents a serious breach of trust between an elected official and those constituents he or ...

From The Complete Colorado:  The cost of making a single photocopy does not exceed five to 10 cents for most government agencies. Yet most, if not all governments in Colorado, continue to charge the maximum fee allowed by law at 25 cents per page for citizens and journalists who obtain paper photocopies of documents via the Colorado Open Records Act. CompleteColorado asked seven state and local agencies for a copy of their photocopier maintenance contracts, which usually list the specific cost for the machine to generate one photocopy. Take for example the Denver Department of Public Safety (DPS), which includes ...

From Columbia Journalism Review:  The New York Court of Appeals ruled in December that Fox News reporter Jana Winter did not have to testify—and reveal confidential sources—in the Aurora, CO, movie theater shooting case. But in papers filed late Thursday, defendant James Holmes’ lawyers officially appealed that decision to the US Supreme Court. Winter was subpoenaed last March to testify in Holmes’ trial after she reported a story revealing that Holmes had mailed a notebook containing violent images to his psychiatrist in advance of the shooting, citing unnamed law enforcement officials. Holmes’ attorneys argued that the officials who provided the ...

From the Student Press Law Center:  A Colorado school district employee instructed staff to destroy public records “to protect against” open-records requests from a special-education student’s parents, according to emails obtained by the boy’s father. “Please delete this email when done. . .” begins a December 2010 email sent by Sarah Belleau, Poudre School District’s integrated services director, to a colleague. “Please ask all involved staff to delete AND destroy any e-mail or paper records related to this family,” Belleau continues. “When they delete the e-mail, they need to then ‘empty the trash’ Please have them do this immediately. All ...

From the Reporter-Herald (Loveland):  The Thompson School District Board of Education's months-long debate over how much public participation is appropriate at meetings reached a boiling point Wednesday evening, as yet another heated argument ended with board president Bob Kerrigan slamming his gavel, ordering security to remove an audience member and looking for a motion to adjourn the meeting two hours early. Wednesday's meeting began at 5 p.m., an hour earlier than usual. The plan was that the board would approve its agenda and then adjourn into an executive session to continue discussing negotiations with licensed staff. However, simply adopting the ...

From the Reporter-Herald (Loveland):  Thompson School District's Board of Education has for months been unable to agree upon how best to handle public participation at meetings, but the board's new legal counsel has drafted several policy revisions that will be the subject of another discussion Wednesday evening. The general ambiguity of the board's current policy regarding public comment has led to some residents, and even some board members, to allege violations of the First Amendment or breaches in unwritten codes of ethics. Board members asked at their last meeting for a review of the policy to be drawn up by ...

The people's right to know is, like "the spirit of scientific inquiry," a "search for the truth," wrote Herbert Brucker in his 1949 groundbreaking book "Freedom of Information." The highly regarded Hartford Courant editor and journalism educator has been credited with coining the phrase "freedom of information." Every state now has freedom of information statutes. read more ...

The Michigan House will soon consider bills that exempt firearm records from the Freedom of Information Act. The bills also set up a method for law enforcement to obtain the records if it's needed for investigation purposes, although the bill says they would have to detail "reasonable suspicion" before they could gain access. read more ...

Some state employees will soon have to move to another building — but there’s one thing they won’t be allowed to bring with them: paper. “We’re being pretty strict that paper should not move,” Gov. Dannel P. Mall ...