Another Site With Information About the Massachusetts Public Records Law and the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law

The Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program's website has a page about the Massachusetts Public Records Law and a page about the Massachusetts Open Meetings Law. The page about the Open Meeting Law includes a good example of a letter to use when making a request. The Open Meeting Law page also discusses conflict of interest issues and has a description of a Open Meeting Law violation that took place last year in Wareham when members of the Wareham Conservation Commission whispered to each other during a meeting so that the public could not hear them. What were they thinking?

Proposed Changes To Open Government Laws In Massachusetts

I found this interesting op-ed by William B. Ketter, Editor-in-Chief of Eagle-Tribune Newspapers. It was written back in November 2004, but it still applies to today. There is more information about the proposed legislation discussed in the article on the website for the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association. Unfortunately, there is not much information about the status of the proposed bills on the General Court's own website.

The General Court not only needs to strengthen the open government laws in Massachusetts, it also needs to be more open itself. For example, it is possible to track pending legislation in Virginia online. Anyone should be able to do that for legislation in Massachusetts as well, particularly since we like to think of ourselves as a high tech center. If an outsider were to use our legislature's use of the internet as a guide, they might get the sense that the technology revolution has passed us by.

Why Post Public Records Online.

In August 2003, the Pew Internet & American Life Project issued a report entitled, “Internet Use by Region in the United States.” Among their many findings, the authors found that New England is one of the most wired regions in the United States, with 66% of adults online, and that New Englanders are among the most likely group in the nation to go online on an average day. They also found that 89% of New England’s Internet users have gone online to try to find the answer to a question, which is a higher proportion than in any other region of the country. In another report, “The Rise of the E-citizen,” the Pew group found that of those people who used government Web sites, 68% said the sites improved the way they interacted with their government.

Given these findings, posting public records on line in New England (specifically Massachusetts) makes sense. It is an effective way for governments to communicate with the public because a lot of people in New England have access to the Internet and use it to find information. In addition, it can have a positive effect on how people feel about their interactions with their government.

Miscellaneous Friday Musings

Just a few things to report today.

Check out two blogs by Robert Ambrogi, who is a Massachusetts media lawyer and the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association. His blog, Media Law, touches on a lot of open government issues and his blog, Robert Ambrogi's Lawsites, tracks websites for and by the legal profession.

Also check out the website for the Coalition of Journalists For Open Government. The organization's primary goal is to protect and increase the public's access to government meetings and records. It's primary focus is on the federal government.

In the coming weeks, I plan to compare the Massachusetts open government laws with those is other states to see where we stand in comparison. For now, however, you can go to the website for the Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project for a rating of Massachusetts laws.

Harvard Case Decided

The Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) issued its decision yesterday in Harvard Crimson v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. (The case was mentioned in this blog in October 2005) At issue was whether records relating to certain incidents listed on the Harvard University Police Department's (HUPD) weekly log of complaints were public records. The Crimson had argued that the because some HUPD police officers had been appointed special State police officers or deputy sheriffs in Middlesex and Suffolk counties, the records were public records. The SJC chose to read the public records law narrowly. It held the records held by the HUPD were not public records. According to today's Boston Globe, the Crimson is now considering pursuing a legislative change which would make the public records law applicable to special State Police officers at hospitals and higher education institutions.

Quote For The Day

The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority.

Justice Frankfurter, concurring decision, Youngstown Sheet &Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 594 (1952).

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., also known as the Steel Seizure case, is about the limitations of the power of the President. The over fifty years old decision has been in the news lately. It has been cited in discussions about President Bush's warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens. In addition, Justice Jackson's concurring opinion to the decision has been discussed during Judge Alito's confirmation hearing.

I like this quote from Justice Frankfurter's opinion because it is a warning to us about our times. Yesterday, President Bush reaffirmed his belief that he can engage in warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens unchecked. As Bob Herbert says in today's New York Times, President Bush's wiretapping activities are not really about balancing civil liberties and national security. Rather, they are further indications that President Bush believes he can do "anything he wants (mistreat prisoners, lock people up forever without filing charges), and justify it in the name of fighting terror."

We need to take Justice Frankfurter's warning seriously.

President Bush's Troubles

I am going to go outside the strict confines of the subject matter of this blog to again discuss President Bush's stand on warrantless eavesdropping. (For the latest about where this controversy may go, see Frank Rich's article in this Sunday's New York Times.)

As a lawyer, it disturbs me that the President has decided to treat the rule of law so cavalierly. Our adherence to the rule of law is what makes our democracy so remarkable. The makers of the Constitution understood the importance of the rule of law. They put a system of checks and balances in the Constitution to make sure that the rule of law, rather than the rule of man, would prevail. They understood that no one person should have the power to make unconstrained decisions in a democratic government because it would lead to totalitarianism. With his position on warrantless eavesdropping, President Bush has decided to ignore the rule of law. We should all be concerned and outraged. (The "legal" reasons the Bush Administration has given for why the President's actions are legal ignore the principles of statutory construction and constitutional precedent.)

As the daughter of two World War II veterans and the granddaughter of two World War I veterans, I am angry that the President has chosen to treat their sacrifices for our country so cheaply. My parents and grandparents put their young lives on hold to defend a country they believed in. My father, who volunteered for military service, lost a leg in battle. He later suffered a debilitating illness due to his war injury, making the last 18 years of his life very difficult. One of my grandfathers, who also volunteered for military service, died at age fifty of a bleeding ulcer, probably due to the effects of having been exposed to mustard gas during World War I. They did not risk their lives for a government that treats its citizens like subjects in a dictatorship. Dictatorships secretly eavesdrop on their citizens without constraint, which is exactly what President Bush maintains his administration has a right to do despite law to the contrary.

President Bush has justified his actions by saying that his administration needs to secretly eavesdrop without warrants to protect us all from terrorists. Assuming this contention has any truth to it, Mr. Bush needs to find another way to protect us; one that does not violate the Constitution and laws. If that other way means that we as a people will be put at slightly greater risk, then so be it. I am willing to bear the greater risk to my safety to protect the freedoms upon which this country was founded. My parents and grandparents would expect no less from me.

Autopsy Reports and Tom Reilly

I have to comment on the news stories last week about Attorney General Tom Reilly's phone call to the Worcester County DA to make sure an autopsy report was not released to the public.
Without passing judgment on whether Tom Reilly's actions were wise, if he really did call the DA to make sure that an autopsy report was not released, as he maintains, then he was assuming that DA Conte did not understand the Massachusetts Public Records Law. (The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held in 1989 that autopsy reports conducted by a medical examiner are exempt from disclosure because they are "medical files or information.")
Is that because often public officials do not understand the Massachusetts Public Records law?