Open records

The Rhode Island legislature is considering a bill that would block release of the names of police officers who are involved in shootings until after investigations are complete.

A Virginia woman can continue posting public officials' Social Security numbers on her Web site, in her protest against what she sees as lax personal privacy standards for public records, but she may not publish the Social Security numbers of private citizens, a federal judge ruled this week.

Many colleges are using the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to hide a wide range of information about their athletes and sports programs, The Columbus Dispatch reported this weekend.

The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records said last week that a request for emergency response dispatch logs should have been granted with the addresses of where the dispatched police or fire units were sent, The York Daily Record reported.

People seeking records under New Jersey's Open Public Records Act do not need to use official request forms, the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court ruled May 21.

OPRA requires agencies to prepare and provide forms for making requests, but it also says that a request need only be made in writing. The appellate court decided that while requesters should use the forms, no request should be denied simply because the form was not used.

The White House has launched a Web site in response to President Obama's Transparency and Open Government memorandum, calling for suggestions from the public on open government policy.

The Illinois Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously ordered a school board to make public a former superintendent's contract, the Chicago Tribune reports.

The Wheaton Warrenville School Board had withheld the employment contract of former Superintendent Gary Catalani when a candidate for the board requested it, claiming it was a  "personnel file" whose disclosure would be an invasion of privacy.

Tennessee’s ACLU chapter is proclaiming victory in its dispute of a requirement that only residents of the state can make public records requests there.

Even so, the state attorney general’s office insisted Thursday there was in fact no change in policy or the law’s requirements.

The Obama administration announced it will finally release photos of abuse in U.S.-run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. Last September, a federal appeals court ruled images of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib must be made available to the public, but the government has since failed to actually release them or other abuse photos.

A bill introduced in California’s legislature would allow state agencies to stop filling the open-records requests of people who have asked for records too many times.

The bill sets out a process for an agency to seek a court order allowing them to no longer process records requests when the requester has an “improper purpose, which includes, but is not limited to, the harassment of a public agency or its employees.”