John Washburn learned that the Texas governor’s office automatically destroys virtually all of its emails every seven days. A cynic might conclude that this policy is an attempt by the State to avoid the embarassment of open records disclosure required by law.

Mr. Washburn responded by writing a computer program that automatically requests emails every four days.

The Governor is not amused. We at The Open Records Project are greatly amused.
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People with felony criminal records would be able to more quickly shield that information from prospective employers under legislation filed today by Gov. Deval Patrick.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino hailed Patrick’s proposals as “much needed.”

“Ex-offenders often have little or no support upon release, in effect giving them life sentences by denying them opportunities for work and setting them up to re-offend,” Menino said in a statement.
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The State of Oregon has placed criminally insane sex offenders in a residence at 177 N. 29th Ave., Cornelius. The program run by Luke-Dorf, a nonprofit Tigard-based mental-health provider, handles only sex offenders of the class “guilty except for insanity.”

Jerry Farstad, incarcerated for sodomy and sexual penetration with a foreign object,was quoted as saying the community shouldn’t fear him and the other residents. “They’re probably figuring the people here might recommit a crime”

Of course that’s exactly what fellow resident Matthew Shipley did when he previously escaped from a state hospital and raped a 3-year-old girl in 1988.

Sgt. David Thompson, a spokesman for the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, said the Psychiatric Security Review Board recently instructed Connell House management to walk the offenders through the neighborhood on a regular basis.

“These offenders are not wearing restraints,” Thompson said. “If an offender decides to walk away from the group, staff members will take no action to detain them.”

Bob Nikkel, who administers the office of mental health and addiction services for the state of Oregon said that siting decisions were based on established planning rules and that those released from the Oregon State Hospital into community homes like the one in Cornelius go through a rigorous determination by a state board before they are released.

The Open Records Project sees a simple solution to any community discomfort. Mr. Farshad and Mr. Shipley can simply bunk in with Mr. Nikkel.
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In one of his last decisions of the year on Monday, December 31, 2007, President Bush signed into law the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reform bill (S. 2488).

For the first time, there will be a penalty for agencies who do not comply with the FOIA’s time limits.

Those of us who make open records requests, know that agencies tend to drag their feet in order to increase the expense to the requesters. Maybe this new law will reduce some of the hassle.
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A Santa Clara County resident infected with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis flew back to the United States earlier this month without alerting authorities of her illness - potentially threatening fellow passengers and people at Stanford Hospital’s emergency room with whom she came into contact.

Citing federal patient confidentiality rules, health authorities would not name the infected woman or the country she was visiting. A CDC spokeswoman said the agency was not yet ready to disclose the airline and flight she was on, where her flight originated or even what day she landed in San Francisco.

Let me see if I understand the facts:
1. A woman with multi-drug resistant TB has been roaming the world.
2. The disease difficult and expensive to treat and has a higher mortality rate than conventional TB.
3. The taxpayer’s employee says, “I’m not telling you the location of the danger.”

How many people must die before the privacy clause of HIPAA is repealed?
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The British gave America the basics of government and a history of societal organization dating to the Magna Carta. However, the United Kingdom has no equivalent of the US Bill of Rights. American concepts such a freedom of speech, freedom of state interference in religion, and rights to bear arms are unmatched in the island nation.

Despite the absence of these rights and many others, Brits have recently discovered their own Freedom of Information Act.

High trust societies are predicated on free flow of information between citizens, particularly regarding the performance of their government. Only an informed citizenry is equipped to embarrass and change the behavior of errant officials.

British citizens are still referred to as “subjects”, but at least now they are informed subjects.
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Friday the Sarasota Herald-Tribune published a searchable database from a nationwide list of 24,500 teachers who have been punished for a wide array of offenses. The SHT requested the information from the Florida Department of Education and then waited for years to gain access to the list.

The list was gathered and maintained by the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification. Roy Einreinhofer, NASDTEC’s executive director, opposed the newspaper’s decision to publish the information.

A nationwide Associated Press investigation earlier this year sought five years of state disciplinary actions against teachers and the reasons behind them. In the years the AP studied, 2001 to 2005, roughly one-quarter of all disciplinary actions against teachers involved sexual misconduct.
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Twenty patients of an oncology clinic in the Dallas area were sickened by medical syringes contaminated with bacteria. The bacterium, called Serratia marcescens, can cause fever and chills but generally responds to antibiotics.

Some of the Dallas-area patients became so ill after the bacterial exposure that they required hospitalization.

However, Texas Department of State Health Services spokesman, Doug McBride, declined to identify the contaminated clinic.

Let me see if I understand the facts:
1. A cancer clinic has been contaminated by bacteria.
2. The bacteria causes people to get sick enough to require hospitalization.
3. The taxpayer’s employee says, “I’m not telling you the location of the danger.”

Hmmmm. My first thought is Mr. McBride needs an employer who will fully appreciated his talents, like Health Director for Vladimir Putin.
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Pennsylvania legislative leaders have paid out-of-state companies $466,000 this year to conduct focus groups and public-opinion surveys. Even though the polls have been paid for by taxpayer dollars, the politicians have refused to release the results.

Politicians are afraid of only two things; being publically embarrassed and being voted out of office. Release of the polls might embarrass leaders either because polling was a waste of taxpayer money or because the results show significant citizen dissatisfaction.

Of course an embarrassed politician can be voted out of office.
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Should adult adoptees have access to their birth records and be able to learn the identity of their birth parents?

It is a question with two sides, that of the adoptee and that of the adoptee’s biological parents.

On one hand, every child seems to have an inner need to know from where they came.

On the other, an adoption agency promised a mother to keep her identity secret forever.

It would seem that the adoption agency should honor the mother’s desire for anonymity unless the mother reconsiders upon a request from the adoptee.
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