Case on Sealed Court Records

The Peninsula Daily News reports on this story of sealed court records in Jefferson County.

Legislators React to Sunshine Committee Recommendation to Get Rid of Legislative Exemption

This story from The (Longview) Daily News describes the reaction of area legislators to the Sunshine Committee's recommendation to end the Legislature's de facto exemption from the Public Records Act.

Public Records Show ... City Council Member Using City Email to Send "Racy" Emails

When the Evergreen Freedom Foundation made public records requests to the City of Kirkland, they wanted to find out if backroom deals were being cut.

They found something else. Apparently a city council member was using his city email account to send some "racy" emails to his girlfriend. During city council meetings. The city will now spend $5,000 to investigate the matter.

Of course, no one should care about adults exchanging "racy" emails. Whatever. But the problem is the use of taxpayer resources for this. And we know it happened only because of the Public Records Act.

Ethics Panel Violates Open Meetings Law

A little ironic, but a Colorado ethics panel was found to have violated that state's open meetings law.

Thanks to Billy Kokanee for the tip on this story.

Obama Administration to Release White House Visitor Logs

In a reversal of a previous (bad) decision, the Obama administration will now release the names of visitors to the White House. Good.

The Bush administration did not release them and we criticized him for that. When the Obama administration initially did the same, we criticized that. Now we give credit where credit is due.

Sunshine Committee Recommends Repeal of Legislature's Public Records Exemption

This editorial by The (Longview) Daily News discusses the Sunshine Committee's vote to recommend the repeal of the Legislature's exemption from the Public Records Act. (It's not technically an exemption but that's a long, lawyerly side show.)