How should you proceed if your city appears to be stonewalling public records requests? Is this a sign of corruption? Mismanagement? Overwhelmed public employees? Where public records accountability is concerned, there’s no single answer. For instance, in San Josè,...
Public records lawsuits—do they aid or undermine democracy? Sometimes government says public records plaintiffs “have an agenda.” Requestors say, yes, their agenda is to shed light on government operations and at times shed light on government malfeasance. ...
Long-time Republican political operative, staunch Trump supporter, and self-described “dirty trickster” Roger Stone has never been one to hold his tongue in the face of controversy. Even in the wake of criminal indictment on five counts of making false statements, one...
When a tragedy like the Parkland shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School occurs, there tend to be two schools of thought where the release of information is concerned. On the one hand, Florida’s Public Records Act protects the rights of citizens and news...
The FIU bridge collapse this past March was a terrible tragedy. Investigators are still trying to piece together what happened to prevent another such occurrence in the future. As a part of this, FDOT has been working with the National Transportation Safety Board...
The Bill of Rights enshrines the rights to free speech and free press in our Constitution. Yet since the beginning of our republic, various compartments of our government have tried (and always failed) to impose prior restraint on those rights by invoking court power...
If you do business with the state of Florida, you may no longer be able to rely on a trade secrets exemption to hide related contracts or financial data from the public. Currently, certain public records can be kept private if they contain trade secrets. In 2016, the...