Will CA Gov. Brown Veto Budget Bill with Rider Gutting FOI Law?

June 19, 2013–[SEE UPDATE: Cal Assembly Walks Back CPRA Attack.] The last-minute sneak attack on open government was crafted and pushed through by Brown's own party. Local governments would be legally able to ignore the major requirements of the Public Records Law which force them to respond to freedom-of-information requests and justify any denial of requests.

AP Probe: Keeping Explosive Chemicals Secret May Not Make People Safer

June 5, 2013–Aftershocks of the April 17, 2013, ammonium nitrate explosion in West, Texas, continue — including investigations by news organizations as well as state and federal agencies. A major multistate investigative project by the Associated Press could only get data for 28 of the 50 states, but within those states it found that more than 600,000 people live within a typical blast zone and more had family in schools and hospitals within one.

Groups Oppose North Carolina "Ag-Gag" Bill

June 5, 2013–NC's Senate is considering an industry-sponsored bill that would extend restrictions on undercover investigations beyond livestock operations to include other categories of industry. The state's Chamber of Commerce supports it, saying industries beyond agriculture want protection from the reporting of workplace abuses.

Pennsylvania Gas Industry Keeps Secret Database on Pre-Drill Quality of Wells

June 5, 2013–The fracking industry loves to argue there's no proof its gas-extraction methods cause pollution. But it works hard in Pennsylvania to keep secret any evidence that might prove the question — one way or the other. Existence of its database was reported by Marie Cusick of WITF in Harrisburg, via NPR's StateImpact Pennsylvania.

State 'Ag-Gag' Laws Spreading, Protect Misdeeds from Scrutiny

May 22, 2013–While a Tennessee governor vetoed "ag-gag" legislation in that state, bills criminalizing the collection of information about abuses in livestock operations are still being pushed in other states — and the mechanism may be extended to stifle reporting on other environmental abuses.

Supreme Court Deals Blow to Out-of-State FOIA Requesters

May 8, 2013–The unanimous decision turned down a FOIA request by a California resident for records in Virginia. According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, only a "handful" of states have similar residents-only restrictions to their FOI laws. But the doctrinal impact of the decision is likely to be large, since the court held, among other things, that the First Amendment conveys no right of access to government information.

Whodunit? The Case of the Disappearing Dilbit

May 8, 2013–InsideClimate News' Lisa Song notes that US EPA's website had originally shown 1,149,460 gallons of oil recovered from the 2010 Enbridge spill near Kalamazoo, Michigan. Sometime in mid-March 2013, she reports, that number was removed from the EPA site and replaced by one much lower, the amount Enbridge claims was spilled.

Texas Fertilizer Explosion Re-Raises Buried Hazmat Disclosure Issues

April 24, 2013–News stories about the April 17, 2013, explosion of a fertilizer storage plant in the town of West, Texas that killed 15 people have so far focused on the plant operator's risk-disclosure failure, instead of the likely fact that government agencies knew the nature and magnitude of the hazard — or should have known. The bigger story is the regulatory failure — and industry's decades-long campaign to keep the public ignorant of the threats they face. Photo: AP/LM Otero/Available through Creative Commons.

Toolbox: Database Helps Track Broken Promises on Parkland Conservation

April 24, 2013–Seattle-based InvestigateWest published a feature package last summer documenting illegal parkland conversions in Michigan, New York City, and Oklahoma. They could not cover all the other states — that was left for you to do, with the assistance of their database of some 40,000 federal grants under the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Broken Promise: Database Helps Track Illegal Parkland Conversions

April 15, 2013–In this excerpt from the new issue of SEJournal (Spring), InvestigateWest's Robert McClure and Jason Alcorn explain how to spin the local angle about how parks built or improved with money from the Land and Water Conservation Fund are increasingly being illegally privatized or converted to something other than parks — including sharing their searchable database of almost 40,000 park grants.