• The Chicago Reader: Chicago schools suffer budget cuts while schools CEO hires administrators at higher salaries, records find

• The Detroit Free Press: Wording of Michigan’s FOIA law limits disclosure

• The News Journal (Del.):  Secret Service won’t reveal visitors to Biden’s home

• The Post and Courier (S.C.): South Carolina representative refuses to release telephone and e-mail records

Happy Friday from SPJ HQ!

• Northern Virginia Daily: Front Royal Town Council violated Virginia’s FOIA after holding May 17 closed session; council agrees to take remedial FOIA training

• The Associated Press: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility uses records requests to find park ranger attacks on the rise

• The Danbury News-Times (Conn.): Danbury City Council minority leader Tom Saadi requests school system e-mails after talk of retribution against school employees

• The Washington Times: Three-year wait for NASA global warming documents may come to an end

The Wyoming Tribune Eagle published an article Wednesday about a 2008 Laramie County Community College trip to Costa Rica. It was revealed that a participating student was on the verge of committing suicide and wasn’t properly counseled.

It wasn’t easy trying to publish details about the lack of chaperone training and medical waivers. The newspaper received a copy of the 16-page internal report from an anonymous source last week, and LCCC responded to the publication by seeking and obtaining a temporary restraining order.

A Tuesday court decision dissolved the restraining order, and the Society of Professional Journalists released a statement Wednesday applauding the decision, stating that the press’ role in reporting vital information to the public will be maintained.

During the 2008 trip, a student displayed suicidal behavior and wasn’t properly cared for, according to the school’s mental health response team. One of the chaperones in question is LCCC President Darrel Hammon.

LCCC was concerned that published articles would violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, which protects the privacy of parents and students by keeping education records confidential.

Press rights and open government advocates, on the other hand, saw this as a slap in the face to the Wyoming press’ First Amendment rights.

The Tribune Eagle didn’t publish student names, and according to the article, the LCCC CARE Team’s two-page summary and recommendations did not identify anyone by name.

LCCC is a public institution, and taxpayers have the right to know what is happening in their schools. This lack of school transparency breeds public distrust, and to cover for LCCC administration and the fact they suffered from a complete breakdown of policy is shameful.

The Tribune Eagle has placed power in the hands of the public to make sure school travel policies are constantly being updated and changed.

April Dudash is SPJ’s summer Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern. Reach her at adudash@spj.org.

When my former SPJ campus chapter conducted an FOI audit two years ago, we asked for the contracts of some head honchos at the University of Florida. You’re looking at superstars like basketball coach Billy Donovan and beloved football coach Urban Meyer. We also went after UF President Bernie Machen’s contract and UF Athletic Director Jeremy Foley’s.

I wish I still had the documents with me, because the perks and the pay listed made our heads spin, but we supposed the cushy contracts weren’t too surprising.

Conducting the mini-audit didn’t prove to be the challenge we were looking for, thanks in part to the strength of Florida’s Sunshine Law. The University of Florida willingly handed over the contracts in a timely fashion. There was no fuss, and we ran out of time to make a worthy news story out of the findings.

[Has your chapter or news organization conducted an FOI audit that proved to be difficult, and do you have tips for others who would like to do their own audit? Have you revealed pertinent information about community leaders that the public had a right to know? If so, please share in the comments.]

We had hoped to some day make public information requests for something better, something harder to grasp. We were happy to know that UF just handed over the contracts without complaint, but we wanted to find those documents that would produce a front-page story. Perhaps it was unfair to want to go for the university “jugular,” but we wanted to put UF through the ultimate FOI test.

It was definitely a relief being in Florida, which is a leader in FOI openness. But it’s still a shame that some agencies around the nation can’t catch up to 2010.

In recent news, the South Carolina Press Association has made numerous requests to law enforcement agencies that have been denied or altered. For example, a city council member’s name was redacted from a police report, and a Columbia police chief refused to release car collision records that involved the newly elected mayor, according to a column in the Aiken Standard.

According to Jay Bender, an attorney who represents the S.C. Press Association and teaches at the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications, there is an attitude that has existed in South Carolina since the plantation days, where a small group in power “made decisions and told the rest of the population that the right decision had been made.”

This backwards way of thinking is the reason why journalists still need to pool their resources and FOI knowledge to keep community leaders in check. I sat in an interview once and told a Florida newspaper that I really liked the fact they had a Watchdog section. The paper’s representative admitted that they rarely updated the section nowadays and that it isn’t quite what they wanted it to be.

Because news organizations have a lack of manpower and/or funding to make important record requests, they are letting leaders run amuck. And when leaders are running amuck, then readers are wondering why local journalists aren’t blowing the whistle.

We’re a bunch of FOI-loving people, so let’s get some story-sharing going. We’d love to hear from you.

April Dudash is the summer 2010 Pulliam/Kilgore Freedom of Information intern and does the bidding of SPJ Headquarters. She graduated from the University of Florida in May and has been an SPJ member since 2006.

I’ve been on the road nearly two weeks for this 45-day Access Across America tour and I’m loving it!

So far I’ve traveled eight states, 3,876 miles, and have given 19 access sessions to 328 people. It’s the greatest! I’m posting tips I pick up while on the road at the SPJ tour blog, http://blogs.spjnetwork.org/aaa/. Check it out for your daily access tip!