The FOIA blog

Thursday Chuckle

This concerns a State Public Records request in Washington.  According to this story, they are building a new tunnel -- a number of groups sought records about the plan and the state denied the request.  One requester even went as far as filing a complaint in state court.  Unfortunately for the state, they had already released the documents on the internet.  The state has retroactively released the plan under the state records act.

Non Citizen Clause Challenged in Virginia

A handful of states have limits on their public record laws that limit the use of the law to citizens of the state itself. A few years ago, Delaware's limit was struck down by the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Virginia is one of these states with this limitation. In 2009, a federal district court upheld it -- and it is now under review by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Opengovva.org has the briefs on the case, which is winding its way to completion.

Release Lou Gehrig's Medical Records

This isn't a FOIA story, but its about records and my favorite subject, baseball, so I'm going to report it.  After all, pitchers and catchers will report in less than two weeks (and its been a long cold winter).

MSNBC reports that a Minnesota State Representative is introducing legislation to permit medical facilities to release medical records 50 years after the death of the individual who the records are on.  The idea is that the records may assist in medical research -- in this case, Gehrig's records from the Mayo clinic would be examined to see if he actually died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ("ALS," the actual medical name for Lou Gehrig's disease) or if he actually suffered from something else, such as multiple concussions.

 

Alaska Still Blocking Palin E-mails

The state of Alaska is still blocking access to it's former Governer, Sarah Palin's official emails.  The Anchorage Daily News has more.

California Bill Tries to Restrict Public Records Act Requests

A bill introduced in California would allow a court to restrict in certain cases individuals from making public records act requests.  While I understand the motives behind the law, I worry that the  unintended consequences of this statute make this a bad idea.

The law can be found here:  Download Ab_520_bill_20090225_introduced[1]

Discovery Against a FOIA Requester

The District of Columbia's Fraternal Order of Police recently filed a complaint against the District of Columbia concerning a FOIA request it made pursuant to the D.C. FOIA (which largely mirrors the federal FOIA). 

D.C. then took the largely unprecedented and rare move of serving discovery on the plaintiff.  After a motion for a protective order, D.C. backed down and withdrew its discovery request.  However, as I've never heard of anything like this, I thought it was worthy of a blog post.

The parties are still quibbling about the discovery--as you can see from these filings with the court.

Download District%27s%20Withdrawal%20of%20FOIA%20Discovery[1]

Download FOP%20Response%20to%20Withdrawal%20Motion[1]

Virginia Coalition for Open Government on Twitter

The Virginia Coalition for Open Government, embracing new technology, is now on twitter at twitter.com/opengovva. 

New Pennsylvania State Records Law In Effect

Pennsylvania's new open records law went into effect on January 1, 2009.  It replaced the old Right to Know law which really didn't let anyone know anything.  More details on the law can be found here.

Palin Invokes Executive Privilege on Emails

According to this Washington Post article, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Republican Vice-Presidential Candidate has invoked executive privilege to withhold emails requested by an Alaskan citizen.

I don't know Alaska law.  However, if a similar problem arose in the federal realm her legal problem on maintaining the privilege is that she cc'd her husband on many of the documents.  While he is the First Man of the state, he isn't a legal employee and that fact may doom her invocation of the privilege as the privilege usually stands only when the documents are internal to the government.  There are some exceptions and they will, no doubt, argue that these exceptions apply to this situation.

I'm trying very hard to keep this blog non-political.  However, this isn't a good sign about Palin's views on transparency in government. 

Sarah Palin Wasilla, Alaska Documents

The town of Wasilla, Alaska, where Sarah Palin was mayor has released documents as a result of numerous Alaska Public Records Act requests.  The documents can be accessed here.