The Michigan Department of State Police wins the wacky agency of the month award. Last week the agency sent a letter to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy saying it will cost $6.9 million to provide copies of requested records. Don’t allow outrageous copy charges to deter your request.

The nonpartisan group says on its Web site that it wanted to find out how the police have spent Homeland Security money since 2002. In a response to the group’s request, the police said they estimate it will cost $6.1 million for staff time to search and retrieve the documents, and then they estimated they will find 2,045,783 pages (to photocopy at 36 cents a page). Umm, that’s a pretty precise estimate of pages. The letter requests a check for $3.4 million as a deposit.

Michigan is one of the states that allows agencies to charge for staff time for getting records together (see www.rcfp.org/ogg/ for how your state handles copy costs). Some states allow agencies to charge only for the actual cost of copies (printer, paper, toner). Some states have set fees, such as 15 cents per page.

In any case, don’t let an agency thwart a valid request by concocting unreasonable copy fees. In the September-October Quill issue I provide 10 tips for lowering your copy fees (https://www.spj.org/quill_issue.asp?ref=1600). Check them out!

Washington state Gov. Christine Gregoire, a democrat, is following in the footsteps of George W. Bush by claiming “executive privilege” as the basis for denying a public records request.

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a libertarian non-profit group, wanted a bunch of records related to an executive order she issued regarding climate change. Her office withheld dozens of documents, claiming executive privilege and the deliberative process exemption. Well, there is a deliberative process exemption in the state public records law, but no “executive privilege” exemption.

The group appealed and threatened legal action, causing the governor’s office to cough up the records. An account of their struggle is posted here. Yet, in a letter an attorney for the governor still claims they can keep records secret because of “executive privilege.”

Gads, what happened to her? When she was attorney general she assured the media (I was in the room when she made some of these promises) that she would fight for open government. Then she becomes governor and turns secretive? Attorneys will come up with all sorts of creative ways to keep records secret. But this story goes to show that if you push hard enough and keep at it, you can cut through the B.S. and get the records the public is entitled to.

I’m amazed at some of the wild excuses public officials come up with to justify secrecy. I’m even more amazed when courts agree with them.

Here is a case in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi). Two Alpine (Texas) City Council members were prosecuted under the Texas Open Meetings Act for discussing public matters in secret. The council members sued the state, arguing that the open meeting law violates their First Amendment right to speak (in secret). A panel of the Fifth Circuit court agreed with the officials (Rangra v. Brown).

This is crazy! Courts everywhere are restricting average people’s right to speak out (e.g., prohibiting high school students from holding up silly signs about bongs and Jesus, allowing government officials to censor government employees, etc.). But here a court is saying it’s OK for high-ranking officials to speak in secrecy – allowing the public to be shut out of the political process. Sheesh!

Groups like the Reporters Committee, and others are asking the full Fifth Circuit Court to hear the case and overturn the panel. Let’s hope they do the right thing and overturn this wacky way of letting government hide from public scrutiny.

The Associated Press reports that the Federal Aviation Administration has reversed its previous decision to release a database of bird strikes on commercial aircraft, the kind of thing that forced a commercial airliner crew to ditch their plane in the Hudson River recently. The AP had requested the database under the Freedom of Information Act.
The reason: People may misinterpret the data and hold it against airports and airlines, and the carriers would withhold the voluntarily collected data from the government.
This is a classic example of the “third-person effect.” In a nutshell it’s this: You and I may not be affected by this, but someone else, who’s not as sophisticated as us, will take it the wrong way.
We shouldn’t let rhetorical fallacies dictate what records are released to the public. The traveling public has the right to know how often bird strikes occur and what is being done to combat it.
If there is a concern about misunderstandings, locking up the information is not going to clear things up. It creates greater apprehension. Instead, we need all the information released, along with whatever else is needed to make it understandable.
Thanks to The Salt Lake Tribune’s FOI blog, The Vault, for pointing out this outrage.

This week SPJ joined an amicus brief in a case where the government wants to keep secret the identities of those long buried in a cemetery at a mental health hospital in Nebraska. A state-owned mental hospital doesn’t want a historical society to have access to people buried on the grounds from 1909 to 1959, claiming they can’t release the records because it would reveal they had mental disorders and violate HIPAA (federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).

This is a great example of where these well-intentioned laws are stretched beyond their limits to hide information in the name of privacy. First, the people have been dead for at least 50 years, so their privacy interests have long passed. Second, it’s important for people to know the names of people who have died in the custody of our government so we can make sure the system is working. Journalists with access to this kind of information have found awful abuses at mental health hospitals. If this information is kept secret than the government will be able to hide all sorts of abuses, all in the name of protecting privacy. The case will be heard by the Nebraska Supreme Court. See the SPJ press release.

Got to hand it to Arizonan public officials to come up with the most innovative ways of misreading public records laws. Now the city of Phoenix (along with some other cities) are making secret the identities of victims and specific identity of some criminals in order to protect them from identity theft, according to a story today in The Arizona Republic.

Personal identifying information such as names of victims, birth dates of criminals and the addresses where crimes are committed will now be kept secret in Phoenix. Criminal suspects will be reported by name, age and race, but no date of birth or address. I’ve heard some agencies are releasing only last names, no first names, to protect criminals from identity theft. In a meeting today with state journalists I heard a ton of complaints about how this is already causing problems. It’s only a matter of time when the wrong John Smith is identified as a serial rapist.

The wacky city attorneys came up with this idea based on a law put on the books a few years ago intended to make government agencies protect their data from thieves getting into files and data held within government computers. The anti-identity-theft law specifically states that it does not apply to records applicable to the public records law. Police acknowledge they know of no criminal who has become a victim of identity theft because of the address or date of birth being released in an incident report. The state public records ombudsman, a former assistant attorney general, says the cities are not applying the law correctly.

I’m always amazed at how some municipal attorneys misunderstand, misread, or outright twist the law against its intent (and in this case the letter of the law). Under the new policy, I guess sex offenders will now be posted online as “John Smith” living somewhere in Phoenix – I’m sure that will make citizens feel safer knowing John is safe from identity theft!

Wow, this one rates in my top three wacky denials. According to an Argus-Press (Owosso, Mich.) story, the county sheriff denied the newspaper’s public records request and then included a bill for $10 to mail the one-page denial letter. Zoinks! Like most state public records laws, agencies in Michigan are allowed to charge for the cost of copying records, but no state I have ever heard of allows an agency to charge someone just for asking for a record, or for being denied records. That’s a slap in the face. Makes you wonder why a county’s top law enforcement officer doesn’t understand (or follow) the law!

This story out of Arizona regarding cameras in courtrooms will make you shutter – with laughter. A court rule is being considered by the state Supreme Court to require judges to outline their arguments for prohibiting cameras in the courtroom. Currently, judges can bar cameras for any reason and not justify their decision. Most folks are in favor of the proposed rule change, including judicial leaders in the Phoenix area. But the presiding judges from Greenlee and Mohave counties issued written comments opposing the rule change for the dumbest reason I think I’ve ever seen put in writing: Cameras shouldn’t be allowed in courtrooms because ”(s)ome of our non-lawyer JPs and Magistrates may not truly reflect the highest levels of professionalism or knowledge, which would reflect poorly upon the judiciary as a whole.”

In other words, we have bozo yahoos overseeing justice in our counties and if cameras were in the courtroom the public might actually see that. And then they might think we are bozo yahoos. And I guess they would be thinking correctly, and might actually demand professional and knowledgeable magistrates. Case closed!

The Department of Justice is keeping secret a list of 10,815 people who bought fake degrees from a Spokane, Wash., diploma mill to get promotions and enhanced retirements, including people from countries that harbor terrorists. Court hearings showed that at least one of the purchasers worked in the White House and dozens others were Department of Defense employees, according to a story by the Spokesman-Review. The diploma mill was shut down and its owner and seven others were sent to prison for selling bogus degrees and fake diplomas to real universities. Thirty-two of the buyers were from “terrorist nation states,” including Iran and Syria.

The Department of Justice and Office of Personnel Management have refused to provide the list to the public, despite admitting that having underprepared cheaters in health care, engineering and other professions “puts the public at risk.” The reason they won’t tell people who has false credentials? Agency “policy.” I guess that confirms the Justice Department operates under a policy of secrecy, even when it hurts the public and defies all logic.

Find out if diploma mills are being investigated in your area and request the list of cheaters. If enough journalists go after that information (great stories and a public service!), maybe the government will see the light.

A county corrections officer in New York faces felony charges but officials won’t release any details, and delayed a month releasing the officer’s name. The reason for the secrecy? They said to protect the victim (see story). Interesting how the details of every other felon’s allegations are public (regardless of how it might or might not affect victims), but when someone from law enforcement is the suspect then details are cloaked. It’s almost as bad as secretly jailing people at Guantanamo Bay and arguing that the secrecy is needed to protect the privacy of those jailed. And if that isn’t bad enough, many journalists struggle with getting basic incident reports in a timely manner. The New Orleans Times-Picayune was so mad about it that they sued the police department over the long delays and reached a settlement (see story). If journalists don’t stand up and sue to make sure our criminal justice system remains open then we will have a secret police state.