LegiStorm continues to expand its impressive collection of House and Senate documents with its most recent addition causing a mini-storm of its own by capturing, archiving and making text searchable all Capitol Hill tweets and press releases. In so doing, the StormFeed service caught a few Capitol Hill staffers by surprise since their tweets, not all of which were strictly official, became word searchable and accessible as a whole, as opposed to on a feed-by-feed basis. (More on this from the Washington Post's Al Kamen.) In the meantime, keep an eye on LegiStorm as the service rolls out new products on a fairly consistent basis.
Update: San Jose Appeals Ruling on Access to Gov. Officials' Private Devices
As expected the City of San Jose has appealed a Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge's ruling on the applicability of the California Public Records Act to communications contained on private devices maintained by elected and other government officials. (For background on the ruling, see our entry here.) The City is basing its appeal on a number of arguments ranging from the practical (i.e., applying a search requirement across an entire city workforce would be overly burdensome) to the purely legal argumentative (e.g., individual government officials are not governmental entities as defined under the California Public Records Act.)
Read MoreAccessing Education World Records
Records maintained by educational institutions are little understood and often overlooked. Long the bastion of student journalists, school-based records are often erroneously believed to be completely off limits due to student privacy restrictions. While it is true that more and more colleges are brokering degree verification through the National Student Clearinghouse (which requires a student release in most instances) and student transcripts are generally private, there are a number of education-related records that are available upon request.
Read MoreMajor CA Public Records Decision on "Private" E-mails of Governmental Officials
A Santa Clara County (CA) Superior Court judge has issued an opinion that could have wide ranging effect on how governmental and elected officials communicate about public business. If the opinion stands up on appeal, officials will be obligated to turn over public records that are stored on their private handheld devices (as text or other electronic messages) and in their private (non-governmental) e-mail accounts.
Read MoreHospital Inspection Reports Now Online
The Association of Health Care Journalists has launched a new site allowing any member of the public to conduct a search for certain federal inspection reports related to acute-care and critical access hospitals since January 1, 2011. This is, of course, a welcome development in terms of access to this data which was formerly accessible only by submitting a FOIA to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
Read MoreCalifornia Public Records Act Expert Terry Franke Shares Insights
The Sacramento Bee has run a very informative interview with Terry Franke -- co-founder and general counsel of Californians Aware. Among his insights: California's court created deliberative process exemption has resulted in more documents being marked "draft" in order to create a presumption that supports withholding. So, rather than simply arguing that releasing a record would interfere with an elected or other government official's ability to reach a decision without undue negative influence (i.e., the "deliberative process"), Franke notes that governments now go out of their way to label documents as drafts so as to protect them from release. Read the full interview here.
Irish Fish Merchant Preserved Thousands of Irish Public Records
Irish fish merchant teaches valuable public records lesson. Read this story about Jackie Clarke, a fish merchant in Ballina (County Mayo) Ireland who collected over 100,000 items related to the Irish struggle for independence. Among the items: an original copy of the 1916 Easter Proclamation.
Read MoreDreyfus Affair File Made Public Record for First Time
The historical department of the French Ministry of Defense has scanned and posted the secret military file that was used to wrongly convict Captain Alfred Dreyfus of spying for Germany in 1894. The full file, which contains over 500 documents, is available here and here (as a more easily navigated Google doc). Dreyfus was a French patriot who, despite being railroaded and then wrongly imprisoned, returned to French military service in World War I.
For more detail on the Dreyfus affair, see this article in The New York Times.
Much Improved FEC Campaign Finance Search Capability
There was a time when the Federal Election Commission was a good source for raw campaign finance data but not for searching the data federal campaigns filed with the Commission. Over the past two years, the FEC has dramatically improved the ability to search and download from its site. Here's a quick tour.
Read MorePublic Records Insight from NYT Social Qs Column
We recently noted a wonderful insight on public records research from the Social Qs column which appears each Sunday in, of all places, the Style Section of The New York Times.
Read MoreColorado Lawmakers Consider Requiring Agencies to Send Requestors Public Records
A measure (HB 13-1041) working its way through the Colorado legislature will, if passed, amend the Colorado Open Records Act to require that agencies mail, ship or electronically remit requested records to members of the public without first requiring an in-person review of the requested records. Like the "citizen only" provisions currently being considered by the US Supreme Court (more in our blog entry here), in-person review requirements are sporadically enforced and easily worked around. All the same, few will miss the in-person review requirement when it is gone, especially given that its very existence is something of a secret to begin with.
For more on the status of the pending legislation, see this AP article.
US Public Records Factor in Foreign Politics (Russian and Egyptian)
In the past year, US public records have played a role in two high-profile foreign political dramas. Most recently, Vladimir Pekhtin, a founder of the United Russia party and chair of the ethics commission in the lower house of the Russian Parliament (the Duma) resigned following reports that he owned property in Miami Beach that was unreported on required statements of financial interests.
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