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Don’t listen to what they say. Watch what they do.
Here are two instances reported by Columbia Journalism Review of city officials trying to hide in plain sight.
In one, a California town tried to claim video of its council meetings was copyrighted.
The judge hearing the case, Michael Fitzgerald of the US District Court for the Central District of California, tossed out the lawsuit. He concluded that under state law cities may not claim copyright in public records, and under federal law Teixeira’s use of the videos was fair. Indeed, the judge called the videos “quintessential transformative works for the purpose of criticism and commentary on matters of public concern.”
In another, a Pennsylvania police chief tried to stop a citizen from taking a photo of a public record. That attempt was overruled by the state’s open-records board.
And Higgins said it would be “absurd and unreasonable” to tell requesters they couldn’t use their own resources to avoid copying fees. Thus, she ordered the township to permit Muenz to inspect and photograph the responsive records.
That’s a good reminder: I have on my phone — and you should too — an app called Scannable that takes a photo of a document, converts it to a .pdf and stores it in a convenient place, in this case Evernote, so it’s easy to find.
Sure, you can take a photo. But it’s not always as readable or usable as the .pdf. And if you can make the copy yourself, you’re not paying some government agency’s price.