Vermont Needs to Reconsider
Open Meeting Law, Increase Penalties
and Eliminate 'Do-Overs'
|
This past legislative session, lawmakers in Vermont passed a bill that they hope will improve the public's ability to know what state and local governments are doing. But even as the bill headed to Gov. Peter Shumlin for signature, Secretary of State Jim Condos called out a local government body for voting on a matter by e-mail, without consulting its constituents or holding an emergency meeting in public as the law required. [More]
|
Connecticut's FOI Loophole:
Third-Party Contracts
|
In June 2013, a Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission ruling kept secret a contract detailing a new relationship forged by the University of Connecticut and Webster Bank. The ruling highlights questions that journalists must grapple with in the age of rising higher-education costs and the virtual arms race among universities to outspend one another to attract the nation's best and brightest. [Part 1] [Part 2]
|
The Providence Journal to Appeal
Chafee Decision in 'First Significant Test'
of Revised Access Law
|
The Providence Journal will appeal a ruling denying the newspaper access to records related to a state police investigation into a 2012 graduation party hosted by Gov. Lincoln Chafee's teenage son that left a young partygoer hospitalized and the governor's son accused of violating a state law that prohibits providing alcohol to minors. [More]
|
____________________________________________
|