Rhode Island Reports On Public Access

Last month the Globe reported that the Rhode Island Secretary of State gave low marks to the Rhode Island General Assembly for compliance with the Rhode Island Open Meeting Law. The grades were included in a report issued by the Rhode Island Secretary of State for the second year in a row. Too bad there is not a similar report prepared for the Massachusetts state government.

I know of at least one other report on Rhode Island that would be interesting to repeat here in Massachusetts. In 1997, a group of students at the University of Rhode Island and Brown University prepared a report on access to public records at the local community level in Rhode Island. The report examined how successful the students were in obtaining copies of certain key public records.