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RAIN 09/19: Dirty Work



Atlanta Journal-Constitution 9/18/00
Open records quests good, bad and ugly
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/monday/local_news_93
5cfadfe2dbc0cd00b6.html

By Lucy Soto
We asked, and you told us. Your experiences with Georgia's Open Records Act
ranged from good to bad to ugly.
A few things were clear, though: We're still a long way from having all of
our government transparent to the public.
Many agencies at the local level still don't get it. Some use exorbitant
fees, delays and other tactics to keep the public from getting records
quickly and economically.
Here are a few of your stories:
Randy Simpson has been trying since January to get names, job titles and
salaries for the 500 employees of the Gwinnett-Rockdale-Newton Community
Service Board. The board delivers substance abuse and mental health services
to mainly poor or uninsured people. Simpson, a frequent filer of open records
requests who admits to being a "pain in the derriere," received a list of
names and salaries.


Birmingham News 9/18/00
Adoptees request to see sealed state records
http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/Sep2000/18-e387564b1.html

The new Alabama law that allows adoptees over age 19 to obtain their sealed
adoption records has kept the state's Center for Health Statistics busy since
it took effect Aug. 1.
The center has received nearly 1,000 requests for information and has mailed
documents to about 500 people, said Reg Strickland, deputy director of the
Center for Health Statistics.
"It's a very time-consuming process," he said. "Every day we hear of somebody
who has just gotten the information. It's still a growing area of interest."
Under the new law, birth parents may file a contact preference/medical
history form with the center. The form allows birth parents to provide
updated medical information to the adoptee and also allows them to say
whether they wish to be contacted.


Dallas Morning News 9/18/00
States stumble in efforts to protect patient records
In the absence of federal standards, laws vary widely
http://www.dallasnews.com/science/172443_privstates_18d.html

By Charles Ornstein
WASHINGTON - When Maine's highly protective medical privacy law took effect
in January 1999, the public response was immediate.
But far from praising the legislature, people were outraged.
Hospitals had interpreted the law so broadly that they withheld from family
members all but the most general information about the status of their loved
ones. Members of the clergy could no longer find out whether dying
parishioners needed their last rites. Florists were turned away at the
delivery door because hospitals would not confirm whether patients had been
admitted.
About a month after the law took effect, Maine legislators suspended it
unanimously. Before the end of the 1999 session, lawmakers passed a new
statute that allowed more information to be shared.


Lawrence Eagle-Tribune 9/18/00
Web site lets patients access their records
http://www.eagletribune.com/news/stories/20000918/FP_001.htm

By Marjory Sherman
If Andoverite Mary M. Mulligan wants to know the results of her mammogram,
the answer is just a click away on her home computer screen.
Should she want to request a prescription refill, she can just point and
click. Ms. Mulligan, a history teacher at Phillips Academy, can also read her
laboratory work and blood tests as well as e-mail her doctor with questions
and concerns.
Welcome to personalized medicine online, an Internet feature in its infancy
that could revolutionize patient-doctor communication.


Shreveport Times 9/18/00
Shreveport updating department history
http://news.shreveporttimes.com/091800/101/11950.htm

By John Andrew Prine
The Shreveport Police Department is looking for recruits -- recruits from a
century ago, as well as folks who put in their 20 or 30 years and then
disappeared into the mists of time.
"We found 13 more yesterday," Capt. David Huddleston, a veteran of nearly 30
years with the Police Department, said while flipping through a large folder
-- one of several -- filled with clippings and reports about comrades long
retired and usually long dead. "We've found probably 175 more whose records
were lost or destroyed. What we're trying to do is find anything we can."
By the spring, Huddleston and two helpers -- Cpl. Gayle McFarland and
civilian staffer Debra Jacobs -- hope to publish a department history and
yearbook, greatly revised from a 1990 edition.


St. Louis Post-Dispatch 9/18/00
Man aims to create a statewide soil archive
http://www.stlnet.com/postnet/news/wires.nsf/StateRegion/401F5189D25B033286256
95E00671BF3?OpenDocument

By Anne Cook
Champaing News-Gazette
URBANA, Ill. (AP) -- When Ted Peck unearthed abandoned jars of soil in the
basement of Davenport Hall, he didn't think they'd attract public attention.
He was wrong. His story was reported in newspapers across the country. It was
featured on NBC's ``Today'' morning show. Noted radio commentator Charles
Osgood called the agronomist to discuss the collection.
That was three years ago. The publicity eventually died down, and Peck got
back to work identifying and moving 10,000 jars of earth to specially built
racks. The soil had been collected by scientists periodically for more than
100 years from many different locations in Illinois.


Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 9/18/00
Documents detail history of Dixmont State Hospital
http://www.tribunereview.com/news/pdix0918.html

By Mark Breton
The plot was thicker than a Victorian tea cookie batter: A Lutheran minister
decided to kill a leading philanthropist and several other people because
they all were minions of the devil.
But the story is not in any novel - it is detailed in papers kept in the back
room of a Green Tree shop called Cybercoins, and it features just one of
dozens of tragedies surrounding the former Dixmont State Hospital.
Today, Dixmont State Hospital is a burned-out shell of what it once was.
Owned by Ralph Stroyne of Carmel Construction Inc., the 407-acre property
along Route 65 in Kilbuck Township once was the home for the hospital, a
farm, cemetery and nursing education buildings.


New York Times 9/18/00
History for Sale, Dents and All
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/18/arts/18VINT.html

By Margarett Loke
Made for America (Part 1)," the summer show at the Howard Greenberg Gallery
in SoHo, included the work of photography giants like Margaret Bourke-White,
Edward Steichen, Robert Capa, Edward Weston and Robert Frank. All the images
were vintage prints from the Time Inc. picture collection, many taken for
publication in Fortune or Life, and all were for sale at prices ranging from
$1,500 to $65,000.
Like the recent offerings at auction and in galleries of vintage prints from
the picture archives of The New York Times and The Daily News, the show
raised a provocative issue: does it matter that newspapers and magazines are
selling the original prints from their archives?




Peter A. Kurilecz CRM, CA
pakurilecz@aol.com
Richmond, Virginia

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