Silly Citizens: Open Records Are Only for the Rich

Fucking public, thinking that state agencies can be held accountable to the rabble.

John Cheves at the Herald:

Government agencies could charge hundreds of dollars for public records that are currently free or cost little under a bill that would rewrite the Kentucky Open Records Act.

"It looks like this innocuous little bill, but it's really a dagger through the heart of the Open Records Act and, as a result, government transparency," said Jon Fleischaker, a First Amendment lawyer in Louisville.

State Rep. Derrick Graham, D-Frankfort, this week filed House Bill 548, although after he was questioned about it Thursday, he said he does not plan to seek a vote on it.

Shame on you, Derrick Graham.  I know the agencies are crying poverty, but that's the fault of the austerity budgets the lege and the governor have forced on them.

Don't balance the state budget on the backs of citizens who have already paid through their taxes for the documents state agencies produce.

Sign Here to Disclose CEO Pay

How many times bigger than your minimum wage is the compensation showered on the Big Boss?  Here's your chance to force the motherfucker to tell the world.

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

Where progressives find themselves unable politically to alter actual legal realities themselves, oftentimes the best substitute is increasing transparency on the realities that exist. Campaign finance is one such area, where in the absence of actual publicly funded campaigns and the ability to exclude big money from the process, the current rage is disclosure laws.

A similar tactic is being pursued for CEO pay:

We already know CEOs of major corporations took home 354 times more pay than the average rank-and-file U.S. worker in 2012. Now, we have the opportunity to see what CEOs make compared with the typical worker in their own companies.

A rule proposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would require companies to disclose the ratio of total compensation between CEOs and the pay of the typical worker. The SEC rule is part of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. Major corporations like Walmart really don't like this, which is why we need your help.

The AFL-CIO has petition to implement the rule. Please go ahead and sign it. As long as Republicans hold the House these are the sorts of things we can do to make progress until such time as we can hopefully alter the balance of power in Washington.

Kentucky Cracks the Door on Child Abuse Secrecy

Several recent deaths-by-abuse of children under state supervision have finally forced Kentucky to open its secret records on child abuse deaths.

But those records are the tip of the secrecy iceberg. The bigger issue is the secrecy of all child protection cases that allows mishandling by both social workers and judges to go unnoticed.

The Herald:

After multiple lawsuits and key lawmakers' repeated calls for more transparency, Gov. Steve Beshear announced Tuesday that he will release state records of children who have been killed or nearly killed as a result of abuse or neglect.

The Lexington Herald-Leader and the Louisville Courier-Journal had sued the state over the records of children who died while under supervision of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, which oversees child protection.

Franklin Circuit Court Judge Phillip Shepherd has ruled twice that the two newspapers were entitled to the records. State law says that child-protection records are private with one clear exemption: the deaths or near-deaths of children as a result of abuse or neglect.

In addition to releasing the records, Beshear said he would hold legislative hearings and conduct an independent review. An independent panel on child deaths will include social workers and pediatricians. Beshear said he will propose legislation on mandatory release of information on child fatalities in Kentucky.

In Shepherd's Nov. 3 ruling saying that the cabinet had to turn over the records, he blasted the cabinet, saying, "The court must conclude that the cabinet is so immersed in the culture of secrecy regarding these issues that it is institutionally incapable of recognizing and implementing the clear requirements of the law."

Beshear's announcement came a day before a hearing about whether the cabinet would turn over the records as the Nov. 3 ruling ordered. The two newspapers argued in court documents that the cabinet might have misclassified some of the deaths so it would not have to turn over records. The media companies had asked that Shepherd make the cabinet turn over the records by Dec. 2 and requested that the state list all fatality and near-fatality cases in which it conducted an internal review — which would show whether the cabinet made mistakes in handling of an abuse case.

Meanwhile, thousands of Kentucky children move through the protection/family-court/foster-care system hidden from public scrutiny. Several states have opened family court proceedings to the press. The states require only the redaction of identifying information, thus protecting the children while allowing the public to know how courts and social workers handle abuse and neglect cases.

Such transparency protects social workers as well as children - under secrecy, social workers cannot defend or explain their decisions, or criticize the decisions of police and the courts.

Without that kind of transparency, there is no accountability.

What Price Adoption Security?

When both Planned Parenthood and Right to (Interfere in Your) Life agree on a policy, you know it's a sign of the apocalypse.

From the CBS station in Newark:

It’s a big step forward for a historic and controversial adoption bill. Lawmakers approved a plan Tuesday to unseal birth records for adoptees in New Jersey.

But some critics said it could encourage abortion, reports CBS 2’s Tony Aiello.

“Every time my kids did something for school, they’d ask me what nationality are we. I’d have to say, I don’t know. It was a good experience growing up with the parents that I had, but I still think it’s owed to me to know where I came from,” adoptee Patti Spiegel said.

Like many who were adopted Spiegel is anxious to learn about her biological parents.

“I would say it’s a burning curiosity,” she said.

And it might be satisfied by the Adoption Rights bill just passed by the New Jersey Legislature, which would allow adults who went through so-called “closed adoptions” to see their birth certificates, learn the names of their parents and begin tracing their family medical histories.

“So if somebody has a family history of glaucoma they know what to check for and that could be very good for them,” said Assemblyman Vincent Prieto, D-Hudson County.

Opposition to the bill came mostly from New Jersey’s Catholic bishops and right-to-life groups, who feared the loss of anonymity would sway some pregnant women against adoption.

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark spokesman Jim Goodness said Catholic charities arranged thousands of adoptions, promising anonymity.

“There are women and men who have been involved in the adoption process for generations who are now having their privacy taken away from them,” Goodness said.

The bill provides a mechanism for biological parents to have their names blanked out, as long as they provide cultural and medical history details.

Bastard Nation dissects the opposition:

Most ideological opposition organizes the debate around central issues which are actually peripheral to adoptee rights. Both Planned Parenthood and Right to Life oppose open records because they feel that access to or frequency of abortion will be affected by changes in the law. Planned Parenthood and other feminist organizations have asserted that permanently sealed records are a reproductive choice equivalent to the medical confidentiality of abortion. The state chapters of the ACLU that have come out against open records have used a tortured argument based on non-existent privacy rights that neither the general public nor legislators have taken very seriously. Concerted outreach and education is effective in neutralizing this opposition, both with the general public and within the oppositional organization itself.

Hat tip to emailer Wil, who writes:

"My birth father was only able to contact me because my birth mother had kept detailed records of my whereabouts. I have been communicating with my birth father weekly for almost 30 years now. It has been invaluable for me to know my birth family's health history. I have also learned that many of my interests are genetically based.

One must question the motives of The National Council for Adoption, Planned Parenthood and the other anti-freedom of information groups that are against open access to birth records."

I am not an adoptee, nor have I been a principal on either side of an adoption. As a First Amendment absolutist, I demand disclosure, but as a civil liberties activist, I defer to personal privacy. I have to hope that any adoptee disclosure law manages to thread the needle of giving adoptees needed information while protecting birth families.

The Full Monty on Your Tax Dollars

Kentucky state government has dropped its checkbook trousers and you can see it all with the click of a mouse.

On Jan. 1, 2009, Kentucky started the New Year with a Web site that provides citizens access to all state expenditures and other vital information about state-funded programs. The new Web site’s address is www.opendoor.ky.gov.

“In today’s difficult economic times, it is even more important for government to be transparent and accountable, and for citizens to feel confident that their tax dollars are being used efficiently and responsibly,” said Gov. Steve Beshear. “I’m proud of our administration’s efforts, along with the bipartisan support of all of the state’s executive branch constitutional officers, to put our checkbooks online for public view in such a comprehensive and user-friendly manner.”

SNIP

Some of the features found on the site include:

• Your Money: A section with dozens of helpful charts, graphs and descriptions that summarize state revenues, expenditures and budget priorities.
• Cabinet/Agency Search: A search engine that provides agency-by-agency data on state expenditures.
• Budget Basics: A tutorial that allows the average citizen to log on and find out basic information on state expenditures, revenues and how budgets are developed.
• Budgeting for Kids: A fully interactive children’s section that offers games, cartoons and interactive lessons on budgets and government finance.
• Vendor Income and Expense Watch (V.I.E.W.): A pioneering effort by Treasurer Todd Hollenbach that allows citizens to search all of the state’s vendor and contractor data.
• Links, links and more links: Providing taxpayers easy access to state audits, investments, tax incentives, election finances and more.

It's nowhere near perfect, particularly in its lack of a google-like search function. And some expenditure totals can appear misleading to those unfamiliar with a particular agency's budget needs.

But Open Door offers more information far more easily than ever before.

Click on and dig in. On the Contact Page there's a place to send suggestions for new features.