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RAIN 10/24: Maps found, Sunshine laws, public records



There are 21 stories in this posting

The Daily Telegraph 10/23/01
Lost maps of colonial Sydney
http://www.dailytelegraph.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,3101024%255E3163,00.html

by Nicolette Burke and Amelia Kerr
A TWO-YEAR hunt for a series of colonial era maps of Sydney has ended with their discovery in a Bondi Junction antique shop.
The original parish maps, some dating back to 1835, show the land ownership in Sydney.
Worth up to $3 million, they were created by the official colonial surveyor, and detail some of the first private properties in Australia.
The maps went missing in July 1999 while being transferred back to Sydney after being digitally reproduced in Bathurst.



Charlotte Observer 10/23/01
Commentary: 1st dime and their last tell a prudent tale
http://www.charlotte.com/observer/local/pub/dannye1023.htm

by Dannye Romine Powell
Bill and Virginia Powell - that's Mr. and Mrs. William S. Powell of Chapel Hill fame - have kept records of every penny they've spent since June14, 1952, the day they married.
Every nickel. Every dime.
Starting with their month-long honeymoon in Canada.
All the way up to noon on Monday, when I talked with them by telephone, Virginia on the upstairs extension, Bill on the downstairs.



El Paso Times 10/23/01
YISD worker charged with taking official documents
http://www.borderlandnews.com/stories/borderland/20011023-147682.shtml

by Gustavo Reveles Acosta
The first in what police say could be a series of arrests concerning the illegal removal of nearly 2,000 official documents from the Ysleta school district was made Monday morning.
Roman Arrieta, 49, a team leader for the construction and maintenance department, was arrested at the Ysleta Independent School District's central offices.
He was accused of removing 1,915 pages from the district's archives June 29, his arrest affidavit stated.



Hays Daily News 10/22/01
City honors request for e-mail documents
http://wire.dailynews.net/hays/HDnews/news/email102201.html

by Mike Corn
More than two weeks after The Hays Daily News requested e-mail correspondence between two or more Hays city commissioners, the city of Hays has supplied copies filling 82 letter-size pages.
Complete fulfillment of another newspaper request seeking e-mail between commissioners housed on commissioners´ personal computers is on hold pending a request for an attorney general´s opinion to determine who is the custodian of those records.
When the opinion will be provided is uncertain, Mark Ohlemeier, a spokesman for the attorney general´s office, said today.



Computerworld 10/22/01
E-signatures slow to gain ground
http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/story/0,1199,NAV47_STO64960,00.html

by Jaikumar Vijayan
Corporations looking to implement electronic-signature networks face formidable challenges related to technology and process standards, consumer protection requirements and conflicting state and federal regulations, say users and industry representatives.
As a result, one year after the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act went into effect (see story), use of e-signatures for e-commerce is well below expectations, they said.
"Adoption by industry has been a good bit slower than most people would have expected," said Thomas Crocker, a lawyer at Washington-based Alston & Bird LLP who earlier this year submitted comments on the issue to the Federal Trade Commission.


Washington Business Journal 10/23/01
Financial privacy issues getting more public attention
http://washington.bcentral.com/washington/stories/2001/10/22/focus3.html

by Emily Sopensky
The paperwork started to flow in this summer. Across the nation, privacy form letters -- criticized by some consumers groups as being too bureaucratic and customer unfriendly -- began appearing in consumers' mailboxes.
The letters asked consumers to allow the company to distribute personal information to other parties. If the consumers responded, their information could remain confidential. If they took no action, the business took it as tacit approval to reveal the information.


Palm Beach Post 10/23/01
Bills would let police skirt Sunshine Law
http://www.gopbi.com/partners/pbpost/epaper/editions/tuesday/news_b34d4f43c210325800ab.html

by Mary Ellen Klas
TALLAHASSEE --The Florida public records law became the first legislative casualty of the war on terrorism Monday as the normally deliberative Florida Senate swiftly approved 12 bills that give law enforcement officials broad exemptions to the state's public records laws and give the state police more powers to detain suspected terrorists.
The Senate Select Committee on Public Safety and Crisis Management agreed to let law enforcement delay the release of public records to prevent or reduce the threat of an act of terrorism. It voted to allow state police to temporarily detain a material witness in an investigation for up to four days and shield its actions from the public records law. It also agreed to exempt information about the location of pharmaceutical supplies from public records.



Mobile Register 10/23/01
New Siegelman policy on records
http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/10038285232134862.xml

by Jeff Amy
Capital Bureau
MONTGOMERY -- Gov. Don Siegelman's administration has issued a revised public records policy that stops channeling records requests through the governor's legal adviser.
Jim Buckalew, Siegelman's chief of staff, sent the letter Friday to state agency heads and spokesmen. It directs agencies to fulfill requests for specific documents as soon as they can be located. The memo directs officials to acknowledge receipt of "non-specific requests" within 24 hours and to fulfill them within 15 days in most cases.


Ottawa Citizen 10/23/01
Audit finds $6.4 million blunder
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/story.asp?id={E2CE82EE-8576-4E04-9641-2DA74FFB9349}

by Ken Gray
A staff oversight and a computer glitch left the entire $6.4-million former city of Kanata payroll out of the City of Ottawa's accounting records for eight months this year.
"It's disconcerting to see such a large amount not reported," said audit committee chairman Michel Bellemare yesterday. "Management needs to be much more vigilant."
The multimillion-dollar error is mentioned in an audit of transition costs, one of five audit reports to be presented to Mr. Bellemare's committee today.



Orlando Sentinel 10/23/01
City clinic, HMO docs may review firefighters' records
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-fire10232001.story?coll=orl%2Dhome%2Dheadlines

by Mark Schlueb
ORLANDO -- After months of wrangling in front of TV cameras and behind closed doors, Mayor Glenda Hood and union leaders have agreed on a way for the city's worried firefighters to make sure they're not harboring any medical ailments they don't know about.
Dozens of Orlando firefighters have picked up copies of their medical files from the city's employee clinic since July, when 13 of their colleagues filed a lawsuit claiming clinic doctors had failed to tell them about serious illnesses. Many firefighters said they worried that they too might have serious medical conditions about which they'd never been told.


New York Times 10/23/01
Paper audit finds spotty compliance
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Access-Audit.html

AP
SEATTLE (AP) -- Nearly 30 years after Washington voters approved an initiative keeping public records open to the public, compliance with the law is spotty, according to a statewide audit by more than two dozen newspapers.
The audit by reporters and other staffers from 20 daily and five weekly newspapers in Washington and northern Idaho was the first of its kind to examine compliance with the state's 1972 Public Records Act. Results were distributed by The Associated Press and published this week.


The Herald 10/23/01
Professor hails exciting Dumas discovery
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/23-10-19101-22-43-0.html

by Cameron Simpson
HE is best known as the author of The Three Musketeers. But a Scots academic has uncovered a new side to the buckle and swash of Alexandre Dumas, after finding a handwritten manuscript gathering dust in a university library.
Dumas's appreciation of great art is revealed in the manuscript, a five-page obituary of the French artist, Horace Vernet, written in January 1863.
Thirty years after it was given anonymously to Stirling University, the manuscript was discovered in library archives by Mike Rapport, a history professor, while he was preparing for an exhibition of Napoleonic letters.



The Times Daily 10/23/01
Siegelman administration reverses its policy on public-record inspection
http://www.timesdaily.com/news/stories/10105newsstories.html

by Dana Beyerle
Montgomery Bureau
MONTGOMERY - The Gov. Don Siegelman administration has reversed its previous public-record inspection policy and told executive branch agencies they can take no longer than 15 days to produce documents requested by the public.
The administration in a memo to reporters and editors urged executive branch employees to comply with the state's open records' law and said "only in unusual and exceptional circumstances should it ever take longer than fifteen (15) working days to comply with a records request.''



St. Petersburg Times 10/23/01
Security measures shutters records
http://www.sptimes.com/News/102301/State/Security_measure_shut.shtml

by Stephen Hegarty
TALLAHASSEE -- A Senate committee approved a package of proposals Monday designed to combat terrorism by closing public records, detaining witnesses and giving broader wiretapping authority.
Twelve separate proposals were passed by the Select Committee on Public Security and Crisis Management. One simply provided a legal definition of terrorism. Two others created exemptions for law enforcement cell phone and pager numbers.
But one would give law enforcement the authority to withhold public records for a week if documents are related to a terrorism investigation. Then, at the end of the seven-day period, law enforcement could ask a judge to delay release of the records for another 14 days.



Texarkana Gazette 10/23/01
County delays on naming records management officer
http://www.texarkanagazette.com/archives/index.inn?loc=detail&doc=/2001/October/23-1885-news07.txt

by Prashansa Sai
NEW BOSTON, Texas--The Bowie County Commissioners Court decided on Monday to delay appointing a records management officer until after consulting with the county election board.
"I have six years worth of paperwork from past elections collecting in my office," said Vallery Watson, Bowie County elections administrator. "And though state and federal mandates allow me to destroy records after a certain period of time, the county must appoint a records management officer for appointed county officials like myself to authorize the destruction of these records."



Seattle Times 10/23/01
Damages awarded for denial of memo
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134357680_olsen23m.html

by Nancy Bartley
More than $46,000 in damages has been awarded to a Kenmore couple who took King County to court after they were denied access to a memo they requested under the state public-disclosure law.
King County Superior Court Judge Palmer Robinson awarded Bonnie and Dan Olsen the damages, which include attorney fees, other costs and five times the minimum fine for every day the document was withheld.
The Olsens requested the document regarding a proposed development in January 1999 from the county's Transportation Department. When the department refused to give it to them, they sued in Superior Court and lost.


Seattle Times 10/23/01
Stonewalled on stadium, document request wound up in court
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134357686_rightstadium230.html

by Lorena Anderson
Eastside Journal
Armen Yousoufian was just trying to answer his 9-year-old daughter when she asked why, despite a public vote against it, a state-of-the-art baseball stadium was being built in the shadow of the Kingdome.
Marysia Yousoufian's simple question turned into a $30 million lawsuit against King County over public-records access.
Although Armen Yousoufian won a partial victory, he isn't satisfied.


Seattle Times 10/23/01
Your right to know: Records denied, she went to court
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134357685_righthistory230.html

by Mike Lee
Tri-City Herald
When Kathleen O'Connor sued the state Department of Social and Health Services in 1999, the Bellevue mother of three knew she was in for a battle.
Last June, she ended up as a champion for public access to government records when the state Supreme Court sided with her in a court challenge.
In O'Connor's attempt to prove her 15-year-old son had been assaulted by a DSHS employee, her lawyer, Denis Stearns, tried to force his way into agency books through public-records requests. He wanted to learn about other cases at DSHS facilities and agency procedures to prevent abuse.


The News Tribune 10/23/01
Putting public records in public's hands
http://www.tribnet.com/frame.asp?/news/local/1023a15.html

by Adam Lynn
The Spokesman-Review
Obtaining public records can be a daunting task to the uninitiated.
Musty files stored in the bowels of the county courthouse and encrypted data squirreled away on state computers can seem as unattainable as the summit of Everest for many people.
Government workers who don't understand the state Public Records Act or choose to ignore it can make the chore all the more difficult.



Charlotte Observer 10/23/01
Water on the Web: Well facts now online
http://www.charlotte.com/observer/natwor/docs/wells1023.htm

by Bruce Henderson
In a first for North Carolina, Mecklenburg County has made public records on drinking water wells, including polluted sites, even more public.
A new Web site pulls together information from county and state agencies that test well water or investigate groundwater contamination. It's a milestone because well records are so scattered that no one knows exactly how many are in use in Mecklenburg.



Wired 10/23/01
Paper still rules paperless world
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,47785,00.html

by Farhad Manjoo
FOSTER CITY, California -- It wasn't too long ago that technology idealists were predicting the advent of a paper-free world. Paper-thin electronic displays, they said, would take the place of wood pulp and ink, and civilized society would never again bear the indignities of dog ears and paper cuts.
Perhaps that age is still to come, but for now, at least, paper is king.


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