March 12th, 2010
Arizona school sues to prevent citizens from requesting records
By David Cuillier
Here’s another zany agency, and again, in Arizona (the dryness skews judgment, I guess). The Congress Elementary School District filed a court injunction against four citizens to prohibit them from requesting any more records.
According to a summary by the Goldwater Institute, which is representing the citizens, the school district has repeatedly violated the public records law and refused to provide basic information, such as budgets. The district states in its suit that the citizens have harassed the school, listing the records requested, including agendas and meeting minutes.
Sometimes active citizens get into arguments with officials and request a lot of records (custodians often call them “frequent fliers”), but the solution is not stripping their right to access meeting minutes. The injunction also asks the court to force the citizens to pay the school’s attorney fees. That’s just wrong. These officials need a lesson in civics!
March 18th, 2010 at 11:35 am
David, you need to check out Connecticut’s FOIA law, I think the worst in the nation.
In response to a single frequent filer, the legislature amended the FOI law to make it a crime, prosecutable.
It places a great chill on FOI requests because if your request can at all be construed as frivolous or perhaps harassive [don't recall the exact language], you could find yourself facing charges. Even if dismissed, it is a big deterrent. Some legitimate requests may have that appearance, each request is different and any quirk can cause an appearance.
When I moved here, I met for the first time editors wary of FOIs, analying each one. The worst part was lots of them figured that it was like that everywhere. Connecticut, arrogant as it is, always thinks things are the same or worse elsewhere.
There are other laws on the books that should be used. They didn’t have to amend FOI to make people think twice about using it.
As Sen Udall wrote when he was AG of NM, the standard for requesting a public document is idle curiosity, any reason or no reason at all. So there is something very disturbing and intimidating about construing that as a crime.
Check out Connecticut’s FOIA. I don’t have time to link it and look up the provision in it right now, but hope you will.