By not posting completed agendas on time and whispering to each other during meetings, a school board committee violated the state’s open meetings law, concludes a preliminary state open-government opinion. … More FOIC Staff: School Board Violated Law
Prompted by city lawyers, the New Haven Police Department turned over a copy of its new two-page hiring guidelines — with almost every line about drug use whited out. Feel like helping to fill in the blanks? … More Fill In NHPD’s [Redacted] Drug Policy
One of the men accusing prominent New Haven Rabbi Daniel Greer of sexually abusing him told his story in harrowing detail — on video. Should the public get to watch it?
And is watching the deposition video different from reading the text version?
Those questions came during a hearing before a federal judge Thursday in U.S. District Court in Hartford. … More Request for Sex Abuse Victim’s Video Tests Law
Federal Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer, a former Quinnipiac and current visiting Yale law professor, turned his Church Street courtroom into a lecture hall when it appeared a New Haven government lawyer needed a refresher course on the First Amendment. … More Judge Schools City On First Amendment
First published in NationSwell. In 2014, Twiana Odom and her daughter paid rent for a home on Detroit’s east side to a man with a forged deed. When yellow tax foreclosure notices started appearing in her mailbox, addressed to a different name than her landlord’s, Odom realized she’d been scammed. Unable to reach the real … More One Tech Company Is Crowdsourcing America’s Largest Land-Use Map
Reposted from Richard Tofel, ProPublica.
In 1733, New York printer John Peter Zenger began publishing the eighth newspaper in the American colonies, and the first willing to venture criticism of the government. The New-York Weekly Journal was the second paper in a city of 10,000 or so people, 1700 of them slaves. … More Donald Trump and the Return of Seditious Libel
At least a dozen government agencies have no idea how much money they spend defending wrongful Freedom of Information Act decisions in court, a watchdog concluded. … More Report: Federal Government Doesn’t Track the Cost of Losing FOIA Lawsuits
On July 4, 1966, at his estate 60 miles east of Austin, Lyndon B. Johnson savored his Independence Day holiday by helicoptering around his sprawling Hill Country ranch; lunching with a federal judge, the president of Neiman Marcus, and two lawyers; boating around a Colorado River reservoir named in his honor; and placing two late-night calls to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. … More The Freedom of Information Act Survives 50 Years
