Publish Date:September 22, 2023

News Roundup: More Attacks on the Public’s Right to Know

In yet another effort by state officials to hide their actions from the public, this week North Carolina lawmakers sneaked into the state’s budget a provision that would be a devastating blow to access to public records.

On Wednesday, news reports emerged about a leaked draft of the budget that contained a paragraph providing lawmakers the discretion to destroy documents in their custody — including those that are currently considered public records.
The final budget released later that day went even further: It contains language allowing lawmakers or former lawmakers to assert legislative privilege “in all instances,” and thus avoid revealing “any document, supporting document, drafting request, or information request made or received by that legislator while a legislator.”
In other other words, lawmakers would have the power to shield their actions from public view — a measure that only benefits lawmakers who wish to conceal their work.

American Oversight issued a statement condemning the effort, and sent a letter — signed by more than 20 other organizations, including a number of national and North Carolina government accountability groups — urging leaders of the General Assembly to reject the anti-democratic maneuver. We also sent public records requests to state legislative leaders for communications containing key terms related to the measure.

This is just the latest effort by officials in states across the country to roll back access to government records.
Last week, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed into law restrictions on the release of records related to her travel and security, having initially pushed for more exemptions to the state’s public records law. In the spring, a similar law was enacted in Florida to shield Gov. Ron DeSantis’ travel records.
Earlier this year, the Arizona Legislature implemented rule changes that instructed lawmakers to delete communications, thus allowing them to avoid releasing documents under the state’s public records law. Similar efforts in Washington state were reported in late February.

Which brings us to Wisconsin. On Wednesday, we filed a complaint with the Dane County district attorney alleging that a secret panel convened by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is in violation of the state’s Open Meetings Law.

Vos has reportedly been considering whether to pursue impeachment proceedings against Janet Protasiewicz, a recently elected state supreme court justice, if she does not recuse herself from a redistricting-related case.
During a radio interview last week, Vos said he was “asking a panel of former members of the state supreme court to review and advise” on the potential effort, but he has refused to disclose the identities of all the members.
The Wisconsin Open Meetings Law requires that governmental bodies provide advance notice of every meeting and hold those meetings in open session unless specific exemptions apply. As the statute notes, American democracy “is dependent upon an informed electorate.”
Read more about our complaint here and listen to the Milwaukee NPR station’s coverage of the complaint, including an interview with our executive director Heather Sawyer.

On the Records

New College of Florida’s Problematic Hiring Practices
Records obtained by American Oversight and reported on this week by Inside Higher Ed’s Josh Moody provide new details about the hiring and recruitment practices at New College of Florida, where Gov. DeSantis and allies have instituted controversial measures aimed at reshaping the public liberal arts college into a conservative institution.

Many of the school’s top new hires have no prior experience working in higher education — but they do have close ties to DeSantis allies or conservative politics. Records we obtained shed more light on the hiring of one high-level official in particular: Bruce Abramson, who was hired as the director of new students and graduate admissions.
The records include emails exchanged in March by Abramson and Robert Allen, a New College graduate who has claimed to be behind DeSantis’ overhaul of the school.
Abramson first proposed a New College course on “propaganda defense,” but then followed up by suggesting that it would likely “be easier to bring people into administration than onto faculty.”
Allen sent an email to interim college president Richard Corcoran (a former Republican state lawmaker and an ally to DeSantis) later that month recommending that Corcoran consider Abramson for a role, writing that Abramson was “keenly interested in institutional transformation.”
The records also show that in April, Allen recommended that Corcoran hire Bruce Gilley, a political science professor who in 2017 published a paper titled “The Case for Colonialism.” The records do not indicate whether Gilley was considered for hire.

Investigating Texas’ Election Integrity Unit
Records we previously obtained showed the Texas attorney general’s office spent more than 22,000 staff hours working on voter fraud cases in 2020 — yet it closed out only 16 minor cases. Records we recently obtained indicate that as of February 2023, the office was looking into three cases regarding the November 2022 election.

Other records we previously obtained showed that the office’s election integrity unit closed just three cases in 2021 and opened just seven new ones. The Houston Chronicle reported that Texas lawmakers still boosted the office’s budget.

American Oversight

News Roundup: More Attacks on the Public’s Right to Know

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