Judge Tracie Hunter has told Hamilton County prosecutors she doesn’t want them representing her in lawsuits accusing her of illegally limiting access to the Hamilton County Juvenile Court over which she presides.

“Judge Hunter has notified (the Hamilton County Prosecutors Office) that she has declined to be represented” by prosecutors, Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Christian Schaefer wrote in Monday court documents in one of the lawsuits.

Hunter didn’t return Monday calls to her office and cell phones.

This is the latest in an ongoing battle over the lawyers who will represent Hunter. Previously, Hunter, a Democrat, said she can’t trust Republican Prosecutor Joe Deters, whose office includes a group of civil lawyers who, by law, serve as the attorneys for elected officials.

Hunter was elected Juvenile Court judge in the 2010 election but only took office more than a year later, after she won a federal lawsuit that required some previously uncounted votes to be counted. When they were counted, Hunter received enough votes to vault her over John Williams and won the election.

Earlier this month, Hunter tried to have three independent attorneys represent her in the suits at no cost. The Cincinnati-based Ohio First District Court of Appeals, though, ruled she can’t do that. It noted the county prosecutor is the attorney for all elected officials and there is a specific procedure Hunter must follow to get outside lawyers appointed to represent her. Hunter didn’t follow that process, which includes asking the Common Pleas Court judges to appoint attorneys for her.

In Monday filings, The Enquirer attorney alleged Hunter is violating the U.S. Constitution by banning its reporters.

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It used to be, if people wanted to know what was happening around town, they stopped in for dinner at Ann & Tony’s restaurant and just listened.

Then, in March, Police Chief Terry Ward started a Facebook page. Each day, he posted the logs of calls and arrests and traffic stops from the day before. People loved it.

Not because they’re a bunch of Nosy Nellies, but because the safety of a community rests with a well-informed citizenry, said local resident and mother Angela Denes.

So when the West Jefferson Village Council and Mayor Darlene Steele ordered Ward to take the Web page down a week ago, residents rallied.

They’re planning to protest at tonight’s meeting and ask the council to reconsider.

“This really isn’t about a Facebook page,” Denes said. “This is about wanting to live in a community that operates in the open.”

Council members said the Facebook page violates the Madison County village’s Web policies. Ward said he doesn’t see how. A review of the policy shows no obvious violations.

Steele acknowledged that the policy really only refers to the village’s official website, villageofwestjefferson.com, but it does say that there will be no links to social media.

Council members, she said, saw this as a violation.

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The reasoning is complicated, but an Ohio Supreme Court decision this week could help dislodge investigative records of closed cases that many police departments across the state have refused to release.

The stonewalling by some big-city police departments in particular has blocked the efforts of journalists, private investigators and defense lawyers to scrutinize closed cases and, in many cases, do the investigating necessary to determine if innocent people have been wrongfully convicted.

For several years, the ONA has been part of a coalition seeking either a court or statutory remedy to the argument that some agencies have been making that a case is never really closed as long as the defendant has any legal remedies available.  The extension of this thinking is that if the defendant is alive to file even the most ridiculous motion, post-conviction records aren’t available for release.

It goes without saying – but I can’t resist saying it anyway – that a wrongful conviction doesn’t do a defendant much good if he’s dead.

The most stirring arguments against this have come from the Ohio Innocence Project, which is centered at the University of Cincinnati. Ironically, the majority of closed-case investigations determine that the right person was convicted, and the authorities did their jobs. However, mistakes get made, and sometimes there is outright malfeasance or abuse of power that puts innocent people in prison or even to their deaths.

In a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the new case, attorneys for the national Innocence Network said this:

“Innocence network organizations across the country depend on public records to operate. As of May 20, 2012, there have been 891 exonerations in the United States (28 of these exonerations were in Ohio) … a high percentage of these exonerations have taken place only because of open public record laws that allow for meaningful investigation of old cases.”

If we value liberty in our nation, independent scrutiny of the court system and the police is essential. To cite one example among many, the Columbus Dispatch and the Ohio Innocence Project used public records to uncover huge problems with the way law enforcement officials were handling DNA evidence.

In recent years, authorities have cited a 1994 case, Steckman v. Jackson, to deny access to records that would be “closed cases” by any layman’s definition. Since then, the rules of criminal discovery have changed in ways that are more open for defendants.  On Wednesday, the Ohio Supreme Court cited those new rules in a case, State of Ohio v. Athon, in which the argument focused on whether a defendant could, in effect, avoid discovery requirements by using the public records law to get access to documents. (Hey, I told you this is complicated.)

Some members of our coalition say that the court’s 4-3 decision could support our claim that post-conviction records are subject to release under the same requirements as other public records.  It also means that defendants can use the public records law to get information just like any other citizen, but must share that material with the prosecution under the rules of discovery in court proceedings.

In the links below, I particularly urge you to read the brief filed by Innocence Network. You will be stirred by the descriptions of outstanding work by journalists and others to free wrongly accused defendants and angered by how Ohio has become an outlier among states in recent years by refusing to release post-conviction records.

While there are no guarantees, I would urge editors and reporters who have been rebuffed in requests for such records to try again. You should cite this new case in support of an argument that the 1994 Steckman decision has been superseded by these new rules of discovery and the Athon case.

Let us know of your efforts.  If you do not succeed, we will know that we must continue to pursue a remedy to right a shameful wrong.

Postscript: You may have noticed I speak with passion about this. The reason is a man named Ray Krone. When I was editor and publisher of the York, Pa., Daily Record, our efforts helped to free an innocent local man from an Arizona prison for a murder he did not commit.  Krone was twice convicted based in large part on what we now know was “junk science.” Police had him bite a Styrofoam cup, and prosecutors found an “expert” to say the marks were a match with a bite on the victim’s body.

The day I met Ray Krone in person, at a welcome-home party in York, we hugged. And I knew that if I did nothing else in my career, I had done at least one thing that helped make a difference.

Links:

• Full text of Ohio Supreme Court decision State of Ohio v. Athon
• Supreme Court news release summarizing decision
• Innocence Network brief in Athon case

Last May, after delaying publication for five days at the request of Obama administration officials who cited national security concerns, the Associated Press published a story detailing a CIA operation in Yemen and Saudi Arabia that derailed an al-Qaida plot to bomb an airliner bound for the United States.

Soon after, the Justice Department announced it was investigating how that story leaked. Often such probes go nowhere, but the Obama administration has been especially tenacious about pursuing leaks: It has prosecuted six officials under the Espionage Act — compared to three previous cases since the law passed in 1917.

Last week, AP executives were notified that federal prosecutors had obtained phone records for some 20 office, personal and cellphone lines used by its reporters in three cities over roughly two months. Officials waited the maximum 90 days allowed under Justice Department guidelines before telling AP, a cooperative owned by member newspapers — including The Plain Dealer — and broadcasters, what had been done.

The sweep of the federal seizure is startling and seems designed to have a chilling effect on journalists and their sources — far beyond the realm of national security. That’s dangerous in a democracy and demands further investigation and closure of legal loopholes that may have enabled such an abuse.

In a letter to the Justice Department, AP President Gary Pruitt said those telephones would have been used by more than 100 reporters and editors. The records could give investigators an X-ray look at a wide swath of AP’s reporting, not just the story at issue.

That alone would make this a fishing expedition well outside the boundaries of the Justice Department’s long-standing policy to make narrow information requests from news organizations. The prosecutors also gave AP no notice that they were seeking information and therefore no opportunity to reply or negotiate. Indeed, they didn’t even say initially what they were investigating. That makes it hard to have a conversation or develop a coherent response.

American democracy depends on a free press and a free flow of information. This kind of government intimidation threatens both.

Additional Coverage

• Criticized on Seizure of Records, White House Pushes News Media Shield Law (From the New York Times)
• NAA issues call to action in wake of AP phone records scandal

The Associated Press learned May 10 that the Justice Department had obtained more than two months’ worth of telephone records from April and May 2012. The call logs covered more than 20 telephone lines assigned to AP journalists and offices. These included both home and cell phones, as well as AP offices in the press gallery at the U.S. House of Representatives and in New York City; Hartford, Conn.; and Washington, D.C.

In a scathing response to Attorney General Eric Holder, AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt estimated that more than 100 journalists could have been affected by the records seizure. Pruitt wrote:

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”

Deputy Attorney General James Cole immediately responded to Pruitt’s letter.

Pruitt and others have called into question whether the Justice Department followed its own regulations governing subpoenas to the news media and to service providers for telephone toll records of members of the news media. Those regulations require, among other things, notice and an opportunity to negotiate unless the notice would pose “a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation.”

Cole did not explain why notice was delayed, but simply stated that the investigation was related to the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. It is widely suspected that the investigation concerns a May 7, 2012 story by the AP about how the CIA thwarted a second attempted underwear bomb plot. The next day, The New York Times revealed that the CIA had been working with a double agent.

“We held that story until the government assured us that the national security concerns had passed. Indeed, the White House was preparing to publicly announce that the bomb plot had been foiled,” Pruitt explained in a follow-up blog post.

NAA issued a statement this week demanding a full accounting of what happened. NAA also joined more than 50 news organizations in sending a letter to the Justice Department questioning the lack of notice to the AP and whether other DOJ regulations for issuing subpoenas to the news media were followed, including a requirement to narrow the scope of the records requests.

“These tactics will not scare us off, or the AP, but they could reveal sources on other stories and frighten confidential contacts vital to coverage of government,” The New York Times wrote in an editorial.

Holder revealed in a press conference and later during a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing that he had recused himself from the investigation after the FBI questioned him because he was one of a few people who had access to the classified information at the center of the leak probe. Holder confirmed that Cole was the one who approved the telephone records request, even though DOJ regulations require the attorney general’s approval.

Congressional Response

The House Judiciary Committee held a DOJ oversight hearing on May 15 with Holder as the sole witness. During the hearing, several members of Congress from both sides of the aisle expressed outrage over the Justice Department’s actions in the AP case, and expressed renewed support for a federal shield bill to protect journalists’ confidential sources. Holder responded that the DOJ and the Obama Administration continue to support a federal shield bill.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced on May 15 that he will reintroduce his shield bill, which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support in the 111th Congress.  In the House, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, a member of the House Judiciary Committee and a former judge, introduced the Free Flow of Information Act of 2013 (H.R. 1962). This is similar to legislation that passed the House of Representatives in the 110th and 111th Congresses by an overwhelming margin and by unanimous consent, respectively. NAA appreciates the leadership of Schumer and Poe on this issue.

As you may remember from our collective effort on a shield bill, after extended negotiations in 2009 to craft a national security exception, the Obama Administration endorsed a Senate Judiciary Committee bill that was approved by the committee that December. While the full House had passed a bill in March 2009, the Senate bill stalled on the Senate floor following the string of WikiLeaks disclosures in 2010. Several members of Congress were concerned that “document dump” sites such as WikiLeaks could invoke a shield law if subpoenaed for the names of their anonymous leakers.

NAA is currently working with our coalition of more than 70 media groups, as well as with interested members of Congress and the executive branch, to see if a federal shield bill can finally be passed in the wake of the AP records scandal. The events that have come to light this week demonstrate that clear, uniform standards – administered by an impartial judge – are needed for the compelled disclosure of confidential source information so that overly broad requests do not chill the flow of information to the public on important government issues.

NAA Member Newspaper Call to Action

In the coming days, we will provide member newspapers with updates on the shield bill effort, including talking points on the issue. If you want to take action now, call your congressional representative and senator and ask them to cosponsor the Schumer media shield bill in the Senate and the Poe media shield bill in the House. The Capitol Switchboard number is (202) 224-3121.

Meanwhile, please don’t hesitate to contact Paul Boyle or Sophia Cope if you need additional information.

The Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today that when the defendant in a criminal case directly or indirectly makes a public records request for information that could have been obtained from the state through a discovery demand, the public records request is the equivalent of a demand for discovery, and it triggers the defendant’s duty under Ohio Criminal Rule 16 to provide reciprocal discovery to the state.

The court’s 4-3 majority decision, authored by Justice Terrence O’Donnell, reversed a ruling by the First District Court of Appeals.

The case arose from a December 20, 2010 traffic stop  in Hamilton County during which Sergeant Cory Wright of the Ohio State Highway Patrol arrested Gary Athon and charged him with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol, speeding, and failing to reinstate his driver’s license.  Athon, represented by attorney Steven Adams, pleaded not guilty to the charges.

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Under fire over the Justice Department’s use of a broad subpoena to obtain calling records of Associated Press reporters in connection with a leak investigation, the Obama administration sought on Wednesday to revive legislation that would provide greater protections to reporters in keeping their sources and communications confidential.

President Obama’s Senate liaison, Ed Pagano, on Wednesday morning called the office of Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and asked him to reintroduce a version of a bill that he had pushed in 2009 called the Free Flow of Information Act, a White House official said.

The bill would create a federal media shield law, akin to ones most states already have, giving journalists some protections from penalties for refusing to identify confidential sources in federal law enforcement proceedings, and generally enabling journalists to ask a federal judge to quash subpoenas for their phone records.

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The U.S. government isn’t allowed to wiretap American citizens without a warrant from a judge. But there are plenty of legal ways for law enforcement, from the local sheriff to the FBI to the Internal Revenue Service, to snoop on the digital trails you create every day. Authorities can often obtain your emails and texts by going to Google or AT&T with a simple subpoena. Usually you won’t even be notified.

Two senators introduced legislation last month to update privacy protection for emails, but the bill remains in committee. Meantime, here’s how law enforcement can track you without a warrant now:

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The tug-of-war over whether Auditor Dave Yost has the power to examine JobsOhio’s books eased after the development company delivered records to Yost’s staff to comply with a subpoena.

But the issue is far from settled.

The auditor’s staff and JobsOhio are negotiating over Round 2 — the next audit.

But while this specific tussle involved Yost and JobsOhio, the job creation entity that was the brainchild of Republican Gov. John Kasich, several groups focused on business growth have made pleas to the General Assembly to help settle the issue in a broader context before it hurts job development in the state. They want legislation that makes it clear how far into a private company’s books the auditor can reach.

The auditor’s office issued the subpoena in March, demanding records it had sought for months from the private, non-profit development corporation. JobsOhio complied, but at the time made clear it disagreed.

Yost, a Republican, contends that he has authority to look at the private non-profit corporation’s books because the root of its revenue is linked to state money. JobsOhio says that as a private company its books are beyond his authority.

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Otterbein University will stop requiring students involved in sexual-assault cases to sign confidentiality agreements, after student journalists discovered that the school was violating federal law.

After initially denying it, an official at the private liberal-arts school in Westerville told reporters for the student newspaper on Monday that he didn’t realize Otterbein had had victims, as well as others, sign a nondisclosure clause. The requirement is being dropped.

“Otterbein will be seeking legal counsel to better understand the rights of our students and the institution,” Otterbein’s vice president of Student Affairs, Bob Gatti, told The Dispatch in an email last night.

The privacy clause has been removed from a judicial administrative checklist that students receive once an assault is reported, Gatti said. The university also will make other changes if necessary.

“We support open conversation and actively encouraging students to seek counsel from campus or off-campus resources,” he added.

Earlier this week, Gatti told the student reporters that the nondisclosure clause was included in the form to conform with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act — FERPA — which prevents colleges from releasing student academic records, such as grades.

But public-records advocates said FERPA is not intended to allow schools to hide crimes.

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First, Ohio Auditor David Yost presented a compelling — and successful — argument that JobsOhio, the so-called private economic development agency, must be audited like any other public agency because it received more than $5 million in taxpayer dollars.

Republican Gov. John Kasich, the mastermind of JobsOhio, at first fought Republican Yost’s subpoena, but ultimately gave in by handing over the entity’s books. Transparency won the day.

Now, the Dayton Daily News has peeled another layer of the JobsOhio covering to reveal that the “private” designation is an exaggeration.

The newspaper analyzed records pertaining to the organization and its predecessor, the Ohio Department of Development, to show that Gov. Kasich’s characterization of ODOD as a “black hole” that failed to even return phone calls was a stretch.

The Daily News’ reporter, Andrew J. Tobias of the paper’s Columbus bureau, recalled a comment Kasich made when he was running for governor in 2010: “The days of trying to connect with business leaders through bureaucrats are over.” Tobias’ story noted that JobsOhio is staffed mostly by former development department employees and other ex-government workers.

And, nearly all those workers also received large raises to leave the public sector, the analysis shows.

But that’s not the only reason the public has a right to know what JobsOhio is up to.

Auditor Yost’s insistence on transparency is necessitated by the reality that $5.3 million in state grants were awarded to the agency and its subsidiary in fiscal 2012. In addition, state liquor profits are used to attract private financing.

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Taxpayers should know where their money goes, what their local government does and whether it is a good steward of public dollars.

While Ohio has better-than-average “sunshine” laws governing public-records accessibility, a proposed new law would help ensure that public information from Ohio’s hundreds of local-government entities is available online, is searchable and can be compared oranges to oranges with data from other local governments throughout the state.

Championed by Rep. Mike Duffey, R-Worthington, and Christina Hagan, R-Alliance, the DataOhio Initiative sets guidelines and establishes grant funding for local governments to put their data in a common, searchable format online. The effort would use commonly available, free software, and would establish $10,000 grants to help pay for the time that Ohio’s 2,334 general-purpose governments — counties, cities, villages and townships — would need to dedicate to making their data accessible through a common portal.

This is a common-sense idea that would provide benefits to everyone at a modest cost.

The state budget now being considered by the Ohio Senate initially would provide $3.5 million for the grant program, with the opportunity to expand funding later.

The initiative is voluntary, but Duffey thinks the $10,000 grants for a project that needn’t be time-consuming should prove compelling to local governments. Local officials themselves could benefit from benchmarking against peer cities; Duffey recalls that as a member of Worthington City Council, he found it difficult to compare metrics on how his city was doing with other cities around the state.

“With more information, people are going to make better choices,” Duffey told The Dispatch recently. “And with better choices, the cost of government is going to come down…natural efficiencies of scale are going to occur.”

The basic idea of the initiative has been championed for years by Gene Krebs, a former Ohio House member. Representing the Greater Ohio Policy Center, with which he was working a year ago, Krebs told the Ohio Senate that “Ohio is still a data desert” for those seeking to evaluate their local government’s performance and compare it with its peers.

The drive to encourage efficiency at the local level is critical to the state’s interest in making Ohio tax-friendly for residents and businesses. Rob Nichols, spokesman for Gov. John Kasich, told The Dispatch in discussing the issue a year ago that while state-level taxes have been reduced, “Ohio’s local-government taxes increased 41.6 percent from 1999 to 2009” according to the U.S. Census. “It’s unsustainable and is a barrier to job creation,” Nichols said.

Duffey also predicts making data easily accessible would create opportunities for private-sector research that could be commercialized or create jobs; he cites the growing field of “big data,” based on data analytics, and the recent decision of IBM to locate its new Client Center for Advanced Analytics in the Tuttle Crossing area.

He says the DataOhio Initiative would encourage more jobs in Ohio in the well-paying and growing field.

By simply making already-public data more accessible, this project can benefit all: residents, the private sector and the public sector.

A state attorney general office official advises local government to “go above and beyond” when it comes to honoring legitimate open-records requests.

That means filling the request as soon as possible, working with those seeking the information, and it’s not a bad idea to forgo charging a fee to those making the inquiries to create good will, said Jeff Clark, principal assistant attorney general.

Clark spoke Monday to about 60 to 70 government officials and community activists at a three-plus-hour training session at the Newport Branch of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County on the city’s South Side.

Nearly all of the session focused on open records with about 10 minutes at the end discussing open meetings.

“It can be very confusing when you get a request” for public records, said Youngstown Councilwoman Annie Gillam, D-1st, who attended Monday’s session. “It can get complicated. It’s always good to hear it for yourself.”

The state Legislature has changed Sunshine Laws — those dealing with open records and open meetings — over the years, and there have been court decisions resulting in other changes, so it’s important for public officials to understand the law, Clark said.

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Ruling in a lawsuit filed by The Dispatch, a judge has upheld a magistrate’s order prohibiting the Columbus Board of Education from meeting privately with its attorney to discuss the student-data scandal.

Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Julie Lynch issued the ruling yesterday, rejecting the school board’s effort to overturn a preliminary injunction granted in favor of The Dispatch. The school board had argued it was entitled to meet privately to discuss matters protected by attorney-client privilege.

Magistrate Tim McCarthy rejected that argument on Feb. 28 and granted the newspaper’s request for an order forbidding the meetings. He said the seven closed-door meetings of the school board with its attorney were legally questionable because they did not involve “pending or imminent court action,” which permits public bodies to meet in executive session.

An attorney for the school board asked Lynch to reverse McCarthy’s ruling. She refused, writing that the magistrate’s ruling was proper and the school board’s position was not “ well-taken.”

The case is scheduled to go to trial in the fall on The Dispatch’s claims that the school-board meetings excluding the news media and the public violated Ohio’s open-meetings laws. The newspaper is seeking a permanent injunction prohibiting such meetings and payment of its attorney fees.

Columbus City Schools spokesman Jeff Warner said he could not comment on Lynch’s ruling. The school board’s attorney in the case, Douglas R. Cole of Dublin, could not be reached for comment.

A judge is barring attorneys, family and potential witnesses from speaking about the slayings of a prominent New Franklin couple.

The order by Summit County Common Pleas Judge Tom Parker follows a pattern of similar rulings issued in other high-profile murder cases.

Parker’s decision stays in effect while the case against slaying suspect Shawn Eric Ford Jr. is pending. Parker’s order came without a request from either the defendant’s attorneys or prosecutors.

Ford, 18, is facing a potential death sentence in the sledgehammer slayings of Jeffrey and Margaret “Peg” Schobert, whose bodies were found April 2 in their Rex Lake Drive home.

Jamall Vaughn, 14, also has been charged in the slayings. Prosecutors have begun the process of persuading a judge to transfer his case from juvenile court and allow the state to try the seventh-grader as an adult.

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A controversial Hamilton County judge is asking taxpayers to pay a private lawyer to represent her as she battles the media over access to public courtrooms and criticizes prosecutors who have represented – and sued – her in the past.

Juvenile Court Judge Tracie Hunter has two lawsuits pending against her filed by The Enquirer and one by a Cincinnati television station over access to juvenile court cases. Because the judge believes Hamilton County’s prosecutors, who normally represent elected officials in civil lawsuits, are biased against her, she wants the public to pay a private attorney to defend her.

“I must be able to trust my legal counsel,” Hunter wrote to Commissioner Todd Portune in a Wednesday letter. “To date, many of the responsive pleadings prepared by the Prosecutor’s Office (in other lawsuits against her), on my behalf, are filled with errors.”

Hunter didn’t return a Friday email, a telephone message left at her office or one left on her cellphone.

At issue is the media coverage in the case of six teens who beat Pat Mahaney of North College Hill in a case that drew national attention after the teens told police they beat Mahaney in the Aug. 11 incident because they were “bored.”

The Enquirer printed the names of the juveniles several times before Hunter issued an order banning the printing of the teens’ names. The Enquirer said it was never served notice of the order and also contends a judge can’t order it to not print public information. The teens’ names were in the North College Hill police report about the incident.

“The Enquirer’s mission is transparency, to be the watchdog so the community can be sure justice is done. Some children are accused of pretty heinous behavior,” Carolyn Washburn, editor and vice president of The Enquirer, said Friday.

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As KPMG was auditing JobsOhio’s books last fall, the global auditing and consulting firm also was seeking $1 million in taxpayer money from JobsOhio for an unnamed client.

JobsOhio, the state’s privatized development agency, says that the grant request was handled separately from and without the knowledge of the firm’s auditing division. But some say the timing raises ethical questions.

The situation also exposes weaknesses in the laws creating Gov. John Kasich’s JobsOhio, because recipients of state aid are kept secret until the project is approved.

While saying he didn’t have enough information to “make a determination” on the propriety of this situation, state Auditor Dave Yost called it “concerning.” Noting that auditors face strict ethical guidelines, the auditor said, “Any time you have questions of independence in our business, it’s concerning.”

Laura Jones, a spokeswoman for JobsOhio, said KPMG LLP’s Columbus office conducted the audit, but the grant was sought by an out-of-state office.

“The fact that KPMG serves JobsOhio and countless other businesses … from the same office here in Columbus is not a conflict in our minds,” she said, adding that the state also monitors and ultimately approves taxpayer-funded incentives to companies.

As the state’s lead economic-development agency, Jobs-Ohio is charged with recommending financial incentives for companies seeking to locate in the state.

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It was encouraging to see a number of veteran public officials attend a three-hour seminar held by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office in Youngstown the other day.

There were a few private citizens there, too, but not enough. Because while the press does its best to hold government officials to account when they operate or try to operate behind closed doors, an informed and vigilant public can be just as effective.

It’s one thing for an official to disagree with a reporter over whether or not the state’s Sunshine Law apples to a specific situation. It’s a little different if the challenge comes from a voter, or five voters or 20 voters on whom that official must rely for support.

Those attending the session this week at the Newport Branch of the library in Youngstown heard Jeff Clark, principal assistant attorney general, say that when it comes to legitimate record requests, it’s easier to comply than fight. And it’s cheaper, too, because Ohio law allows citizens to sue for damages and recover legal fees when elected or public officials flout the law.

DeWine continues a tradition of Ohio attorneys general in attempting to educate public officials and the public about the state’s Sunshine laws, a body of law that has evolved over the last 40 years to cover public meetings and open records.

Anyone eager to educate themselves on the law can go to the attorney general’s Website. The office periodically updates its “Sunshine Laws Manual or “Yellow Book,” which explains the law in layman’s terms and answers questions. It can be easily downloaded.

The office also created a model open records policy that local governments can adopt or use as a guide for their own open records policies.

State law now requires every elected official to attend a Sunshine seminar during his or her term. If they comply and if the entity has adopted a Sunshine policy, there is no legitimate reason to run afoul of the law.

Unfortunately, too many elected officials continue to view what should be public records as their property and believe that they can meet to discuss business outside of the public eye.

Clark advised elected officials in Youngstown to “go above and beyond” what they may think is their duty in complying with open government requests.

That’s another way of saying what has been Ohio law for more than 40 years. The preamble to the state’s Sunshine law says specifically that it should be “liberally construed” toward openness. In other words, when in doubt, err on the side of being open. Those public officials who choose to err on the side of keeping the public in the dark are, to mix metaphors, playing with fire.

State agencies make more than 9,000 actions on rules and regulations each year about everything from driver’s licenses to air quality regulations to low-income housing programs.

Lawmakers launched on Monday an online tracking system to make it easier for average Ohioans to navigate and track rule changes and public hearings on proposed rules. The RuleWatchOhio.gov website allows anyone to track specific rules or rules by subject, such as agriculture, cosmetology or education.

Lawmakers on the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review said the goal is to better inform business owners and other Ohioans of rule changes that impact them.

“We don’t necessarily know how onerous or illogical a rule might be until folks who actually have to deal with these rules point it out to us,” JCARR member Sen. Frank LaRose, R-Akron, told reporters on Monday.

Before Rule Watch, people had to know the rule number and contact the agency or JCARR, a panel of lawmakers from both chambers that makes sure agencies stay within their law-given authority, to find out the rule status. JCARR also offered a lengthy, weekly email of all the week’s rule filings.

Rule Watch will send users an email on their tracked rules the next business day after an action has taken place. The website also tracks upcoming meetings about rules or subjects being tracked.

Registration on Rule Watch is free, and LaRose said the site won’t spam people with unnecessary emails.

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Today, with “Battle Lines; Gangs of Toledo,” The Blade begins telling the story of gangs in our community. This story, which required an unprecedented outreach to the gangs themselves, includes information your city government should be giving you but is not giving you — where gangs are concentrated in this city.

When Mike Bell ran for mayor almost four years ago he promised to run an open government if elected; he promised to be transparent. But on the important issue of gangs in Toledo, and on many other issues, the mayor has practiced the opposite of what he preached.

The people of Toledo have a right to know about gang activity in this city. They have a right to know where it is. They are entitled to see the “gang map” that tells where gang activity is most dangerous and intense.

Many months ago, The Blade asked for that map, which is a public document under Ohio law. The mayor refused to release it. He has persisted in this refusal, even in the absence of legal authority. This refusal is illegal and unjustified.

The Blade, with great effort and with potential endangerment to courageous Blade staff members, has therefore assembled what the city already has — a gang map. It never should have come to this. But only a map can really show the magnitude and scope of this problem.

One consolation is that The Blade’s map is almost certainly more accurate than the city’s because gang members were naturally more willing to talk with our reporters than police officers.

Revealing this information will not tell gang members anything they don’t already know. And it will not make the work of the Toledo police force any harder. But it will inform and protect the public.

Many people will not like what they read about their city in this series. We don’t like it either.

Our motive is not to defame anyone or to depress readers but to show what is — to tell the truth.

In the final analysis, the gang map is not a matter of the newspaper’s right to know, but the people’s right to know. The Blade is merely the surrogate and servant of the people of Toledo. For only an informed public can govern itself.

Today The Blade fulfills its duty to inform the public, and we call upon the mayor to keep his promise of open government.

We will continue to pursue the legal case in the courts — the city’s map of gang activity belongs to the people of Toledo, and not just to its mayor.

Additional Coverage

• Blade suit tries to pry gang map from city (from The Blade)
• Toledo mayor calls Blade ‘irresponsible’ for reporting information he won’t release (from Poynter)
• How 2 Blade staffers overcame obstacles to cover Toledo’s gangs (From The Blade)

In August 2010, then-candidate John Kasich announced his plan to privatize the Ohio Department of Development, calling the government agency a “black hole” that failed to even return phone calls.

“The days of trying to connect with business leaders through bureaucrats are over,” Kasich said during a campaign appearance at a Columbus steel company.

But JobsOhio, the private economic development nonprofit Kasich created in 2011 to replace the Department of Development, is staffed mostly by former ODOD employees and other ex-government workers. Nearly all of those workers also received large raises to leave the public sector, a Dayton Daily News analysis found.

In all, 19 of JobsOhio’s 22 full-time employees are former state workers, including seven people who worked for ODOD in 2010 or earlier. All but two of the 19 received raises of at least 15 percent above their state salaries.

Read the Full Story>>

States may have little reason to restrict public records access to their own residents, but the practice is not unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The unanimous decision, allowing Virginia to favor its residents under its Freedom of Information Act, goes against media organizations and professional data miners that had sided with the law’s out-of-state challengers.

During oral arguments in February, several justices had questioned whether the state’s law served any purpose, since non-residents can hire residents to get information. In his ruling, Justice Samuel Alito noted much of the data is available on the Internet.

Still, Alito said, the state law “did not abridge any constitutionally protected privilege or immunity” because access to public records is not a “fundamental” privilege, such as employment.

While the Constitution’s privileges and immunities clause “forbids a state from intentionally giving its own citizens a competitive advantage in business or employment, the clause does not require that a state tailor its every action to avoid any incidental effect on out-of-state tradesmen,” Alito said.

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One member of the Olentangy school board is suing the other four over a series of emails and phone calls that he says violated state public-meeting laws.

Adam White filed the lawsuit yesterday against Dave King, Julie Wagner Feasel, Kevin O’Brien and Stacy Dunbar. The suit was filed in Delaware County Common Pleas Court.

In the lawsuit, White says the other board members held an illegal, private meeting to discuss district business, although he doesn’t say that they met in person. Instead, he says a series of emails and phone calls constitutes a meeting as defined in Ohio law.

For elected bodies, the law says a meeting is “any prearranged discussion of the public business of the public body by a majority of its members.” Public business is to be handled in public, the law says.

To win the case, White would have to prove that the emails fit every part of the state’s definition of a meeting. He makes that case in the suit and asks for $500, along with court costs and attorney fees.

“This case is not about money; it’s about forcing the Olentangy school board to follow the open-meetings law,” White wrote in a statement.

O’Brien, the board president, said he and the others named in the suit plan to use district lawyers in their defense. “I don’t believe we’ve done any wrong,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that he feels this is the only means in which he can have dialogue with board members.”

In October, the four board members sued by White sent more than a dozen emails to one another, planning a response to a Dispatch editorial that criticized Olentangy schools and other districts for requiring board members to notify the superintendent before they talked to other administrators or visited schools. In the emails, which were also sent to some district administrators, the four drafted a response defending the policy that was published in the Oct. 27 issue of The Dispatch.

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In an impressive show of swift bipartisan action, both houses of Congress late last week passed a bill unanimously, in a matter of seconds.

Unfortunately, the legislation takes the teeth out of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, aka the STOCK Act, the law passed with great fanfare last year prohibiting members of Congress and other high-ranking government officials from making stock trades based on inside information.

A key part of discouraging insider trading was for the law to require online, easily accessible disclosure of stock trades valued at more than $1,000. A number of lawmakers in both parties were embarrassed last year by news reports from 60 Minutes and other outlets, which detailed trades whose timing raised questions about whether these government officials were acting on insider information.

Last week’s revision to the law, after the online-disclosure requirement already had been delayed for months, was made after some raised concerns about privacy and security risks of posting trade information online.

It completely exempts Congressional staffers, and does away with the requirement for members of Congress and other high-ranking officials to make the information available online in a searchable database. It keeps the reporting requirement for those higher-ups — but essentially says that anyone who wants the information will have to come to Washington and do some digging to find it.

Lisa Rosenberg of the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation called Congress’ move an “epic failure,” pointing out that security concerns could have been addressed through narrow exemptions and tweaks rather than wholesale gutting of the law. She says the change sets a dangerous precedent, suggesting that government can make information difficult for anyone to obtain while claiming that it is making it publicly available.

“Are we going to return to the days when the public can use the Internet to research everything except what their government is doing?” Rosenberg wrote on the foundation’s blog. “Will Congress, in its twisted wisdom, decide that information is public if journalists, academics, advocates and citizens are forced to dig through file cabinets in basements in Washington, D.C. to find it?”

Ask any reporter who’s ever received stacks of irrelevant paper documents or electronic data files that can’t be opened in response to a public-records request: It’s very possible to obey the letter but not the intent of a public-disclosure law. For powerful government officials to argue that they should be exempt from having to make these records available online is especially galling, coming at a time when many are questioning government overreach in seeking to invade citizens’ privacy in a number of ways.

The irony is that, as the Christian Science Monitor reported when the STOCK Act was signed a year ago, “the driving force behind the bill was Congress’ attempt to boost dismal approval ratings.” If that was the goal, this revision is sure to make people even more cynical about Congress and government secrecy.

The Ohio Supreme Court has let stand a $5 Bureau of Motor Vehicles fee that trucking companies and insurers have now twice failed to derail.

In a ruling released yesterday, the justices voted 6-0 to uphold the fee the BMV charges to provide certified copies of commercial driver’s license histories to employers and insurance carriers.

Motor Carrier Service Inc., a Columbus trucking company, argued that the fee was illegal because Ohio’s public-records law requires governments to provide copies of records at cost, typically 5 cents a page.

However, justices found that the public-records law is subordinate to the federal and state driver-privacy protection laws the BMV cited to impose the $5 fee.

Under the privacy laws, the bureau must remove drivers’ personal information from public records it releases. But the same law permits the BMV to provide unredacted copies to employers and insurers, and it charges $5 for that service.

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Monroe County Auditor Pandora Neuhart has some explaining to do.

It seems she has opened herself to a big box of questions.

Her office requires those who want to view property records or sales on the auditor’s website to pay a $15 monthly fee — $180 a year — to examine public records.

“Due to budget restrictions, this website is a subscription only service. The subscription price is $15 per month, and subscriptions may be purchased by contacting the Monroe County Auditor’s Office at (740) 472-0873. Thank you!,” says a notice.

Problem is, it is illegal under Ohio law to charge the public to view public records, whether online or in person.

Ohio Auditor Dave Yost fired a warning letter across the bows of a few county recorders last year when his office found them illegally charging fees to access public records online.

Auditor Neuhart was not available to answer questions today. Monroe County is in southeastern Ohio, hard against the Ohio River.

The Medina Board of Education has been taking a lot of heat since the action it took at its Jan. 7 meeting became public six weeks later.

The board had unanimously approved a new five-year contract with Superintendent Randy Stepp that included an $83,000 signing bonus.

But the contract wasn’t on the agenda before the meeting. The board didn’t specify why it was going into executive session during the meeting. And after the meeting, the minutes didn’t reflect what happened.

This week, the school board acknowledged what many have claimed, that the whole thing violated the state’s open meetings law. And then the board went a step further – rescinding the contract.

Dave Marburger of Cleveland has been practicing first amendment and open government law for 30 years. He says the Medina case as unusual on several fronts.

“Even when, as a matter of law, the act is invalid and their lawyer knows it is, it is rare for the public body to acknowledge that they made mistake,” he said. Even rarer, he said, is a government to undo “the act on their own.”

Dennis Hetzel is executive director of the Ohio Newspaper Association and president of the Ohio Coalition for Open Government. He says cases like this one often end in do-overs, with local governments trying to go back to affirm their actions.

“If a board does kind of an ‘Oh whoops’ —  and often it is innocent, they realize after the fact that they went too far and they shouldn’t have done what they did — they just simply quickly correct it.” And he said the courts often respond: “There’s no significant damage, … you corrected it, it’s moot, don’t do it again.’”

But the Medina board’s action is now likely to be in court on a totally different basis. Superintendent Stepp, who is on paid leave, says the deal was valid, and the board is trying to “profit from their mistake and remove themselves from a legal obligation to uphold a contract that they willfully and unanimously approved.”

Stepp said in an email that the dispute is in the hands of his lawyer so he can’t comment further.

The semiprivate board created to manage publicly owned Nationwide Arena says it will hold at least one public meeting per year, but it still plans to operate mostly in private as part of an agreement with Columbus and Franklin County officials.

The four board members of Columbus Arena Management, or CAM, met privately on Wednesday for the first time to sign the operating policy, 10 months after canceling their initial meeting because Mayor Michael B. Coleman, county commissioners and county Prosecutor Ron O’Brien rejected their plan to meet in private.

The board agreed to hold one open meeting a year, most likely in June, to discuss and vote on Nationwide Arena’s operating budget. The board also agreed to hire an accounting firm to audit the arena’s finances.

Coleman said yesterday through his spokesman that the new policy is “significant progress” compared with CAM’s original desires, though he said “it falls short” of his expectations for transparency.

Until this week, attorneys for Nationwide Realty Investments and Ohio State University — two of the four entities with representatives on the board — had included language in the policy to allow future CAM board members to make the board completely private.

Coleman and county Administrator Don Brown balked at that idea, and the language was deleted.

But Coleman and county officials didn’t get everything they sought. They wanted CAM to operate as a public board and go into executive session to discuss major acquisitions or business deals, as is permitted by state law.

CAM maintains, however, that it is a private entity and will meet in private when it deems appropriate, said Xen Riggs, the arena’s chief operating officer.

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The liberal-leaning blog Plunderbund is pushing back against state claims that investigations of threats against Ohio Gov. John Kasich are not public records.

Plunderbund Media filed a complaint with the Ohio Supreme Court on Friday seeking the release of records it contends are being illegally withheld by Department of Public Safety Director Thomas P. Charles.

On Aug. 14, Plunderbund managing editor Joseph Mismas says he filed a public-records request seeking copies of State Highway Patrol investigative files involving threats against Kasich or his staff.

Public safety officials declined to release a word, argung the documents were exempt from release as “security records” containing information about protection of the governor, who is guarded by state troopers.

The “assessment and disposition relative to each threat … would be indicative of the relative strengths and weaknesses of a particular governor’s security position. Consequently, the release of such records would pose a significant risk, not only to Governor Kasich, but to his wife and children as well,” wrote Robin Mathews, a public-safety lawyer.

The complaint argues there is no blanket exemption blocking the release of “security records” and claims that the Department of Public Safety failed to consider releasing records after redacting sensitive information.

“The Ohio Supreme Court has consistently held that any exceptions to the public document act requirements should be narrowly applied.  The Department of Public Safety has claimed a security exemption that is far too broad to be consistent with Ohio law on public documents,” said Victoria Ullmann, a Columbus lawyer representing Plunderbund.

The letter is ready to go. All she needs is the courage to send it.

“The mystery of who I am has always eaten away at my heart, not knowing my roots, my heritage, my health background. Only adopted people can truly understand that feeling of incompleteness. Pieces of my puzzle were missing. Growing up in a family where I looked completely different always drew attention and comments.”

Carol Bailey hopes the woman receiving the letter is her mother, but she isn’t sure.

Carol’s adoption was final on Jan. 23, 1964, just weeks after Ohio law closed adoption records for her and about 400,000 others adopted between Jan. 1, 1964 and Sept. 18, 1996.

Carol is my husband’s sister. For years, she has been trying to solve the mystery of herself. She wants to find the answer to that question she heard all through her childhood, “Where did you get your blonde hair?” She wants to have answers for all those doctors who ask, “Do you have a history of diabetes? Cancer? Heart disease?”

She can’t get access to her original birth certificate, but people adopted before 1964 and after 1996 can. House Bill 61, which is before the Ohio state legislature, would change the law so those adopted between 1964 and 1996 would also have access to their records.

The legislators should approve it. Who you are shouldn’t be a mystery to you your whole life. As for the birth mothers, there’s no shame in giving a child the gift of life and passing that gift on to someone else. Times have changed. The law should reflect that change.

Read the Full Story>>

Ohio does a poor job of providing online transparency when it comes to government spending, a watchdog group says in a report released Tuesday.

The state received a “D+” — one of only 12 states to receive a “D” or “F” grade — in the annual report by the Ohio Public Interest Research Group Education Fund. Ohio’s grade improved from last year’s “D.”

“We could have done a lot better,” said Tabitha Woodruff, an advocate for the Ohio watchdog group. “There is an improvement … but it still leaves us as one of the lagging states. So, very disappointing.”

She added that Ohioans are demanding transparency, so it should be a greater priority.

The report, called Following the Money 2013: How the States Rank on Providing Online Access to Government Spending Data, reviewed the Ohio websitehttp://transparency.ohio.gov.

It says the site provides checkbook-level information on contracts, economic development tax credits and grants. But it lacks other details such as noncontract payments to vendors and spending through some agencies.

Other states provide such information, Woodruff said.

She added that both Republican and Democratic-run states fared equally well so transparency isn’t a partisan issue.

Texas received the top score. North Dakota was the worst.

“It’s tough to take too seriously concerns about transparency from a group whose donors appear to be kept secret from the public,” said Rob Nichols, a spokesman for Gov. John Kasich.

To read the full report, go to: www.ohiopirg.org.

Judge Theresa Dellick of Mahoning County Juvenile Court would have opened her courtroom to media cameras and sound recordings if she were to preside over a high-profile case such as the Steubenville rape trial or the Chardon High School shooting case.

However, Judge Dellick said she would not have allowed photographers to show the faces of the defendants, which were shown during the Steubenville trial.

Her position on this issue is “probably the overriding philosophy of juvenile judges across the state of Ohio,” Judge Dellick said.

“Some go as far as to not let you use their names.”

In her court, “We have allowed the names [to be published or broadcast] only because they are on the police report, and that’s a public record,” Judge Dellick explained. However, Judge Dellick said she insists that only initials or a pseudonym be used for juvenile victims and juvenile witnesses.

In Columbiana County Juvenile Court, where Judge Thomas Baronzzi presides, a local rule says any request to televise, photograph or record the proceedings must be made in writing at least 24 hours in advance; the equipment must be pre-positioned and stay in one place; and no cassettes, film, magazines or lenses are to be changed while court is in session.

No victims, witnesses or jurors may be photographed or recorded without the judge’s permission. “If the subject matter of the proceeding is a child, the name or identity of any party, witness, child, parent or participant shall not be disclosed unless by specific authorization of the court,” according to the rules of practice of the Columbiana County Juvenile Court.

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A court ruled (March 29) that a Hamilton County judge can’t kick reporters out of court without holding a hearing.

The Cincinnati-based Ohio 1st District Court of Appeals granted a request by The Enquirer to prohibit Juvenile Court Judge Tracie Hunter from kicking a reporter out of court without the legally required hearing.

“Representatives of the Enquirer shall be permitted in the courtroom,” Appeals Court Judge Lee Hildebrandt, Jr., wrote in a Friday ruling.

Hunter twice this month kicked the reporter out of court, accusing the Enquirer of ignoring her court order to not print names of juveniles charged in a beating case that drew national attention. The Enquirer never was served with Hunter’s order before the evictions.

One of the major concerns we have had with Ohio’s open meetings law is that it leaves a lot of wiggle-room for public bodies to be overly vague and even evasive about the reasons why they go into executive sessions.

Sen. Shannon Jones, R-Springboro, has introduced a bill (Senate Bill 93) that would take needed steps toward fixing this problem by requiring clearer, more specific information in the motion and vote to meet in secret. The bill also requires more details in minutes kept of executive sessions and makes it a bit easier to collect attorney fees if you sue for enforcement of the law.

These are all good ideas, and we look forward to working with Sen. Jones and others to support the measure.

We also met with Sen. Joe Uecker, R-Miami Township, regarding his bill, SB 60, that would eliminate the very limited access journalists have to concealed carry permit information.  These records would be completely exempt from public scrutiny. Note that the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police opposes this bill as well.

We pointed out that it would be impossible under Ohio law to publish a complete database of permit holders, something that has raised so much outcry across the country since a New York newspaper did so.  We cited examples from around the country of important stories that have been made possible by access to this information. Anecdotal fears about things that might or might not happen shouldn’t trump the importance of government records being public.

I also like to suggest that gun rights groups should be suspicious and concerned about the government keeping a secret database of gun owners.

I doubt that we convinced Sen. Uecker of our position, but it was a healthy exchange of ideas. Now we will wait and see what happens with this bill.

We have updated our Legislative Watch List for ONA members to follow all the bills we are tracking.  I am hoping we will not see legislation that will aid new layers of secrecy to the operations of JobsOhio.  Stay tuned on that one.