Dreyfus Affair File Made Public Record for First Time

The historical department of the French Ministry of Defense has scanned and posted the secret military file that was used to wrongly convict Captain Alfred Dreyfus of spying for Germany in 1894.  The full file, which contains over 500 documents, is available here and here (as a more easily navigated Google doc). Dreyfus was a French patriot who, despite being railroaded and then wrongly imprisoned, returned to French military service in World War I.

For more detail on the Dreyfus affair, see this article in The New York Times.

Colorado Lawmakers Consider Requiring Agencies to Send Requestors Public Records

A measure (HB 13-1041) working its way through the Colorado legislature will, if passed, amend the Colorado Open Records Act to require that agencies mail, ship or electronically remit requested records to members of the public without first requiring an in-person review of the requested records.  Like the "citizen only" provisions currently being considered by the US Supreme Court (more in our blog entry here), in-person review requirements are sporadically enforced and easily worked around. All the same, few will miss the in-person review requirement when it is gone, especially given that its very existence is something of a secret to begin with.

For more on the status of the pending legislation, see this AP article.

US Public Records Factor in Foreign Politics (Russian and Egyptian)

In the past year, US public records have played a role in two high-profile foreign political dramas.  Most recently, Vladimir Pekhtin, a founder of the United Russia party and chair of the ethics commission in the lower house of the Russian Parliament (the Duma) resigned following reports that he owned property in Miami Beach that was unreported on required statements of financial interests. 

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"Citizens Only" FOIA Restriction Heard by Supreme Court

The United States Supreme Court heard arguments in a case challenging Virginia's "citizens only" Freedom of Information provision yesterday.  According to news accounts (including this one from The New York Times), Justices were skeptical of petitioner arguments that the clause -- which limits the disclosure of Virginia public records to "citizens of the Commonwealth" only -- was unconstitutional. No matter what the Court decides, "citizens only" provisions are few and far between and seldom enforced.  

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Bay Citizen Demonstrates Method for Researching Hospital District Boards

Wonderful piece in The Bay Citizen on researching local hospital district boards.  The piece is by Jennifer Gollan and Katharine Mieszkowski.  Read it carefully for good tips on the research methods used to tackle local oversight and governance board research.  Here's our exegesis:

  • Conflict of Interest statements matter -- Members of many local boards and commissions are required to file these forms.  Often overlooked, they can help tie in family members or businesses to contracts approved by the local board of commission.  An example from The Bay Citizen piece -- local bank CEO who sits on a hospital district board and reported owning stock in his bank's parent company worth upwards of $1 million while the local bank collected $1.2 million in fees from the hospital district.  How did they find out -- the local bank CEO reported his stock ownership on his conflict of interest form.
  • Relationships matter -- As illustrated in the example above, a key to this type of research method is knowing how the members of the board or commission you are studying relate to the vendors receiving contracts.  Keep in mind that human nature applies -- people more readily do business with people they already know.
  • Contracts and minutes matter -- Boards and commissions keep a written record of their meetings which will, at a minimum, record how members voted and what they voted on.  Some will even produce a video or audio record.  Expert tip:  Capture the minutes (either by download or by scanning the paper copies)  and run them through an optical character recognition software (like Adobe) and they become word searchable.
  • Know the regulators -- Boards and commissions are remote islands of government but not completely islands unto themselves.  In its piece, The Bay Citizen cited a California State Auditor report and noted that the hospital district boards it studied were also monitored (albeit loosely) by county-based entities known as Local Agency Formation Commissions.  This is a California-only regulatory set-up but the point is the same -- check the set-up where you are doing the research because there should be some outside review of the local board apparatus.

Here Comes the STOCK Act

The STOCK (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) Act was signed into law on April 4, 2012 and many of its key provisions are now starting to take effect.  Most recently, a provision requiring federal personal financial disclosure report filers to make so called periodic reports of transactions went into effect on July 3rd.  

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California Judges Required to Post Conflict of Interest Statements Online

California's Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) ruled this week that state judges are not exempt from the online filing of conflict of interest statements. Judges and other statewide officeholders have been required for decades to file California Form 700 but the California Judges Association has been fighting for two years to get its members exempted from a regulation requiring that the forms be filed online. For a good (and brief) summary of the judicial Form 700 issue read the Sacramento Bee.

For a complete list of which officials file with the FPPC, access this page at the Commission.