August 23, 2010 by   order lipitor in a order lipitor. Less than 30 people attended the meeting. And that’s how many would find out what really happened in that meeting,

Police at the scene threatened to arrest the journalist if he didn’t leave. Of course, the journalist was the last person that needed to be threatened by police. Perhaps the police should have threatened the assemblyman and compelled him to acknowledge .

Several things I’ve learned through , our weekly Twitter conference on Freedom of Information issues, come to mind. First, video cameras will bring out the worst in public officials and their staff as far as secrecy goes. But few will object to, or notice, a voice recorder. For many reasons, video is far superior to just voice recording, but it is better than nothing. Second, the fact that Mike Gatto is acting like a diva is a story in itself. If this were a special on VH1, it would be understandable why he wouldn’t want unexpected cameras. But as an elected official, paid by taxpayer money, he has no right to exclude journalists (and thereby exclude his constituents) from public meetings. This is a story on it’s own right, and had he let the journalist in the meeting, the journalist probably wouldn’t have found anything as worthy of reporting as Gatto’s power trip.

Lastly, people are becoming a part of government accountability, and officials should embrace this and learn to work with citizens instead of trying to push us out. We’ve talked about the benefits to governments and citizens alike to . Officials can benefit by having justifications for their decisions available and they can also see a decrease in . The benefits to citizens are obvious.

It won’t work to keep us out, we’re already in. Officials need to get with the times and include us in the conversation, or suffer the wrath of informed citizens.

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When thinking about , people often forget that public universities fall under that umbrella. But the burden of transparency does fall on universities. And so does the inevitable confusion about what should be disclosed and what should be kept private.

University of California and California State University administrators have taken seemingly contradictory stances on two bills dealing with donor privacy. Administrators are arguing for a bill that gives them the right to continue sharing alumni contact information with credit card issuers and other corporate partners. They are at the same time opposed to a bill that would lift the anonymity of certain donors, claiming this would have a chilling effect on contributions.

Administrators say these are “Two very different issues,” akin to “Apples and oranges.” , a San Francisco Democrat, says it is “Blatant hypocrisy.”

Earlier this week, I wrote about the Referendum 71 case, where the Supreme Court ruled that Washington state was to the names of people who voted to get Referendum 71 back on the ballot. I implied that the line between matters of transparency and matters of privacy could be thin, gray, nonexistent, or incredibly confusing. In this case, however, the two ballots seem to be on opposite sides of the line.

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A few days ago, to pass legislation that would give the administration of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty “unspecified additional time” to respond to requests in unusual circumstances. D.C. currently allows 15 days for a response to a FOIA, with a 10 day extension. (In comparison, Illinois FOIA law allows for 5 days to respond, and an additional 5 day extension.)

“I have never seen more burdensome that are sapping the energy of our lawyers and paralegals,” Nickles said. “You can’t both cut our budget and expect that we’re not going to have difficulties responding.”

Of course, executing open records and open meetings acts are worth extra money. It is part of governments’ responsibilities to deliver information we have a right to. But it is also important to balance this need with reality. What are the reasons to extend the amount of days to answer a request? As Nickles noted, sometimes governments don’t have the resources to answer all information requests in a timely matter.

My experience with the Illinois Freedom of Information Act shows the dual nature of the matter. Illinois had been suffering from poorly fulfilled FOIAs when the Attorney General Lisa Madigan decided to back an upgrade to the law. The , as compared to the old FOIA, gave governments more compelling reasons to answer a FOIA by upping the penalities for failing to comply with the law. It also shortened the amount of time to respond from seven days to five. After I sent FOIAs to , somewhere around 80% (or higher) of the counties asked for the additional 5 day extension. This could point to the fact that for certain requests, the time limit is too strict. Still, what is the alternative? The alternative is local governments not taking a FOIA seriously and abusing more generous time limits.

But Nickles says the Fenty administration isn’t in this boat: the administration is doing great on transparency. One member of the DC Council, Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), disagrees and is currently advancing a transparency bill that would create an independent agency to oversee and . Nickles has said the bill is unnecessary because the Fenty administration is creating an electronic system that will make it easier to submit and track FOIA requests. Nickles pointed to statistics that show the average response time to requests has been reduced since 2007. In general, the AG thinks D.C. is transparent enough already.

However, as one participant in , there is no such thing as too much transparency. We are due every last bit of nonsensitive information, online, and once that utopia is reached, we want information in real-time.

Cheh, in return, has said Nickles “is looking for an open-ended excuse not to comply, and he’s not going to get it. It’s a simple invitation to delay, an invitation to mischief.”

Fenty’s administration has sought to “delay at every turn” says the Chairman of the Fraternal Order of Police. The union’s attorney noted that the District “doesn’t respond at all or responds a year or two later, only after we file a lawsuit.”

Nickles also took issue with a provision of Cheh’s bill that would allow the new agency to impose fines. He said it would create an “unnecessarily punitive and adversarial approach that casts government agencies and their employees as villains to be punished and pursued.”

“Unnecessary” is in the eye of the beholder, which is the taxpayer in this case. Governments can’t afford to get lazy when it comes to providing information to its citizens, and they must lean towards quick disclosure. Illinois law treats asking for unreasonable fees for a FOIA response as noncompliance. In the same vein, if D.C. is really taking up to a year to respond to a FOIA, and ignoring others, then that is noncompliance, breaking the FOIA law, which makes the negligent agency a criminal. Nickles should be fighting for stricter penalties, not serving as an apologist to lazy governments.