Public employees

Maryland's highest court today ruled that redacted state police records of racial profiling complaints can be made public under the state’s Public Information Act in Maryland Department of State Police v. Maryland State Conference of NAACP Branches.

The Montana Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that the city of Billings must release an internal investigation letter issued to a police department employee who allegedly made personal purchases on a department credit card.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled this week that the public has a right of access to the names of state pension benefit recipients as well as the amounts they receive. The court decided that the public interest in releasing the information outweighed any privacy interests of the individuals named within the records.

The court’s ruling affirms a lower court's order last year to the New Hampshire Retirement System to disclose the same records.

The names and pension amounts of retired county employees are public records that are useful in holding the government accountable, a California appeals court ruled Tuesday in San Diego County Employees Retirement Association v. California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility.

The Wyoming Supreme Court on Tuesday affirmed and adopted the opinion of a lower court that school districts in the state must disclose the names and salaries of their employees under the state public records act in Laramie County School District No. One v. Cheyenne Newspapers, Inc.

The names and job descriptions of Securities and Exchange Commission employees who were caught viewing pornography at work will remain a secret, a federal district judge ruled Tuesday in Colorado.

Denver attorney Kevin Evans requested the information after reading an SEC report that found that 24 SEC employees and seven employees of an SEC contractor were using agency computers to access pornography. The investigation found that the employees in question spent hours at work viewing pornographic websites and one employee was found to have a long-standing Internet porn addiction.

Performance evaluations of Illinois state employees are now exempt from the Illinois Freedom of Information Act after the Illinois Senate Wednesday followed the House's lead in voting to override the governor's veto of House Bill 5154, which originally passed both houses last spring.

Last summer, Gov. Pat Quinn issued an amendatory veto on the bill, which originally exempted the performance evaluations of all public employees. The veto eliminated all of the exemptions except those for law enforcement employees.

A Florida federal judge has struck down the law that resulted in the arrest of an individual who published the contact information of a police officer in a website critique.

The former head of an office tasked with protecting government whistleblowers from retaliation will plead guilty to charges he tampered with public records by hiring a private technician to delete information off his computer while at the Office of Special Counsel.

Oklahoma has made more than $65 million in the last five years selling its citizens' private information -- including birth dates of state employees that it has refused to release in response to public records requests, The Oklahoman and Tulsa World reported.