> > Carol Becker suggests: > > The assumption in Minnesota is that everything is open to citizen inspection > unless specifically identified as not public information. (the laws that > govern this are known as the "Sunshine in Government" laws and are fairly > strict in Minnesota) The things that the public cannot get generally are > restricted to a relatively few things - you can't ask for information from > the attorney who is defending the City in a court case, there are limits on > what you can get related to employee records, etc. Beyond that, any citizen > can go in and ask for just about any bit of information that the government > has. So it would seem to me that any citizen who wanted to ask for > preliminary documents, working papers, etc, would be able to ask for them > and obtain them from the City.
The law and reality don't mesh when an agenda/policy inside the agency differs from the law. Often - too often - unwritten rules are made up to protect the domain of a department head or a department's culture and only threats of legal action or real lawsuits loosen the agency's grip on its otherwise public information. Many citizens are hoodwinked by intimidating bureaucrats who refuse requests for information based on some amorphous "rules" that privatize it for security or personal protection. Even knowledgeable reporters become cowed by such declarations. Many bureaucrats and supervisors actually believe their own statements that the data or reports or other information is private when it is not under the law. If it doesn't seem to make sense that information you are seeking should be private, it probably isn't and refusal to allow access should be challenged immediately. Thanks to years of eating away at its core, the definitions of public and private information have become a confused and convoluted mess, with phony claims of security and privacy occasionally convincing legislators to tweak what was once seen as a model open government statute. The McKinsey report is probably not among the documents being withheld, but it may be that, as seen on this list the last two days, its preliminary conclusions and recommendations could be considered final by many observers, thus misleading its readers and other citizens over the future of the MCDA. Such are the exigencies of open government. Andy Driscoll Saint Paul _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
