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The idea for the first-in-the-nation message board came from Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott and Democratic state Sen. Kirk Watson of Austin.

How public officials use the message board, if they create one, remains to be seen. Will they actually engage in frank discussions electronically in front of the public, or will they use the message board for propaganda purposes?

These new laws take the state’s open records and open meetings requirements into the 21st century, says Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas.

“The clear understanding is, if you’re performing governmental functions, no matter the device, it’s subject to the Texas Public Information Act,” says Laura Lee Prather, an Austin attorney who specializes in First Amendment issues and worked closely with lawmakers and open government advocates to get these bills passed.

Remember that to get this information, all you have to do is write a letter to a government body requesting it. There are a few exceptions for what’s available, but most government documents are yours for the asking. Sometimes you have to pay, depending on the request and the governmental body, and sometimes you don’t.

The state’s public information act is clear about who owns these records: you do. The preamble to the Texas Public Information Act states that public servants do not have “the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”

It’s our job to remind them of that. Now it’s a whole lot easier.

The new laws

Read the new open government laws at the Texas Legislature Online website, www.capitol.state.tx.us/. Search “Legislation” by bill number and use 83R, for the 83rd regular session.

SB 1368: Declares that electronic messages on public or private accounts are available through open records requests. Takes effect Sept. 1.

SB 1297: Allows governments to create an Internet message board for public officials to deliberate away from public meetings. Takes effect Sept. 1.

HB 2414: Permits video conferencing by officials unable to be physically present at a publicly called meeting. Has become law.

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Personal: YankeeCowboy.com

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Filed Under: Column, Customer Service Issues, Government Tomfoolery, Introduction to Watchdog Nation, Technology Issues Tagged With: FOIA, open government, sunshine laws, Texas open meetings, Texas open records, texas public information act, TPIA

Watchdog Tip of the Day: Getting government records

April 20, 2014 by Dave Lieber

What do you do when you have a hard time getting government records. Here are some ideas on open records, public information, sunshine laws from The Dallas Morning News Watchdog desk administrator Marina Trahan Martinez. In our Watchdog Video Tip of the Day, we try to solve problems in under a minute.
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Filed Under: Column, Customer Service Issues, Government Tomfoolery, Privacy, Video Tagged With: Dave Lieber, FOIA, Freedom of Information, get government records, government secrecy, open records request, watchdog nation, Watchdog Tip of the Day

Fort Worth City Hall lawyer loses job over open records failure

May 11, 2011 by Dave Lieber

Fort Worth has a reputation for being difficult to deal with when it comes to public records requests. A Star-Telegram examination last year showed that the city delays requests by going to the state attorney general far more than other Texas cities of its size.

I decided to test the system with a request. The results are worse than I expected. The city’s grade is an easy F, with no room for appeal.

Here’s what happened: On Nov. 11, I asked to see the e-mails and personnel record of a city police sergeant. On Nov. 29, the city asked the Texas attorney general whether it had to release the records, with a city attorney saying he believed that the records could be kept secret.

The attorney general’s office ruled Feb. 7 that the records should be released because the city failed to meet a legal deadline. The AG’s letter to the city states: “You have not submitted to this office comments explaining why the stated exceptions apply, nor have you submitted a copy or representative sample of the information requested. “Therefore, we have no choice but to order the city to release the information.”

Then I waited some more. Nothing.

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So on Feb. 28, I filed a complaint with the attorney general. A month later, the office notified Fort Worth of the complaint. Then on Saturday, April 2, at 7:16 p.m., the city attorney responsible for my request, C. Patrick Phillips, finally responded. He provided about 80 of the sergeant’s e-mails and other records, fulfilling my request.

“As for the delay in release of these records, I offer you my personal apology,” Phillips wrote in an e-mail. “Please trust that such delays are contrary to the intentions of the City Attorney’s Office, the Police Department, and the City of Fort Worth.”

Four days later, on April 6, Phillips’ employment with the city ended. One of his supervisors won’t say why.

“I can’t talk about the details of a personnel case, but he’s no longer with the city,” Deputy City Attorney Peter Vaky said. Vaky has been placed in charge of open-records management. He says he and new City Attorney Sarah Fullenwider are “taking steps to make sure that will never happen again.”

He declined to talk about what happened in my case, but he said there is no current backlog of requests in the open-records office.

Reached Friday, Phillips said he couldn’t comment. “Dealing with anything having to do remotely with a former client is not anything I can talk about,” he said. Phillips, 33, had worked in the city attorney’s office for four years.

Critics have said that the city relies on attorney general opinions on some requests to delay releasing the information. The city denies that.

In my test case, I requested information that had caused the city trouble once before. A Fort Worth police officer had sought the e-mails of the same police sergeant and couldn’t get them.

A year ago, when I interviewed Phillips about the matter, he told me that the officer had received all the available information. He explained that the e-mails probably no longer existed. “We just don’t have it,” Phillips told me last year.

Fetching the e-mails from a backup server would be difficult and unnecessary, the attorney general’s office had ruled. But the 80 e-mails that I received included ones that Phillips said the city didn’t have.

I checked last week with the officer who requested those records more than two years ago, and he still hasn’t received them.

Vaky declined to comment, saying he wasn’t familiar with what Phillips had done or said or why the e-mails had suddenly become available.

Last year, Phillips told me, “We know the process is ugly. … We would like it to get better.”

My test case shows that didn’t happen. But the city says it is now on top of it. We’ll see.

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Thanks to TexasWatchdog.org for picking up this story here.

Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is available in hardcover, as a CD audio book, ebook and hey, what else do you need. Visit our store. Now revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

Dave Lieber's Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong

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Filed Under: Column Tagged With: FOIA, Fort Worth, open government, open records

Fort Worth is No. 1 in thefts from blue outdoor postal collection boxes

May 6, 2011 by Dave Lieber

Fort Worth has a reputation for rodeos, art and friendly people. Today, sadly, Watchdog Nation gives Fort Worth another title.

And it hurts because Watchdog Nation is headquartered there.

Cowtown is the No. 1 city in America for thefts from blue outdoor postal collection boxes. Texas is the top state for such thefts.

That news comes courtesy of a Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. I requested details about mailbox thefts for 2010.

Watchdog Nation took this photo in late 2009 of a mailbox break-in outside the Haltom City, Texas post office.

Three hundred thefts from blue boxes were reported nationwide last year. Two hundred were in Texas; 34 were in California.

Of the 10 pages of a spreadsheet provided to me by the postal inspectors who investigate these crimes, seven pages related to Texas boxes.

Fort Worth had 45 reported thefts last year. Arlington had 28, Dallas 25, Houston 20, San Antonio 13, Grand Prairie 10 and Austin none.

Fort Worth had 1 of 7 of all mailbox thefts in the nation.

Why?

Police spokesmen in Arlington, Dallas and Fort Worth declined to speculate. The area office of the postal inspectors, which does not publicly report the crimes, meaning that customers cannot figure out whether their mail might have been stolen, also declined to comment.

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A. Lee Fritschler, a professor of public policy at George Mason University in Virginia, studies postal operations. When I asked him why Cowtown is No. 1, he joked, “You’re lawless down there.”

He questioned me closely about the data, then explained that there was not enough information to speculate.

He noted that only a small amount of mail is stolen from the boxes. “I’m a big critic of the way things are going, but they’re pretty good at not losing mail.”

I asked the national spokesman for the postal inspection service how much effort is put into catching the thieves.

Lawrence C. Dukes Jr. says the crimes, which inspectors call volume mail thefts, are usually conducted by organized groups. In fiscal 2010, the Fort Worth regional office reported 195 arrests and 192 convictions related to mail theft and identity theft, which is often the result of a mailbox break-in.

Of the 195 arrests, 46 arrests and 43 convictions were related to volume mail theft investigations.

I’ve learned that thieves either pry open the back of the box with a crowbar or use a fishing line and a sticky substance to remove mail.

Nationwide, Dukes says, volume mail thefts were down 12 percent from the previous year.

Not in Tarrant County, though, where I reported about 60 thefts in 2009. For 2010, I count more than 80.

Nationally, there were 213 arrests and 180 convictions of volume mail thieves. That means that about 1 in 5 volume mail thieves convicted nationally are from North Texas.

Dukes’ advice: “The safest method to mail letters is to bring your letters directly into the post office or hand them to your letter carrier. Postal customers should make every effort to mail letters before the posted collection times and avoid leaving mail in a collection box overnight or when the post office is closed.”

Read the complete transcript of the Texas Opens Meeting Act trial here.

Are you tired of fighting the bank, the credit card company, the electric company and the phone company? They can be worse than scammers the way they treat customers. A popular book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, shows you how to fight back — and win! The book is available at WatchdogNation.com as a hardcover, CD audio book, e-book and hey, what else do you need? The author is The Watchdog columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Visit our store. Now revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

AVAILABLE IN HARDCOVER, ON ITUNES (AUDIO), KINDLE AND IPAD

Filed Under: Column Tagged With: FOIA, mailbox theft, post office, postal, postal inspectors, USPS

Texas Opens Meetings Law challenge could go to U.S. Supreme Court

May 4, 2011 by Dave Lieber

Here’s the latest information on public officialdom’s assault on the Texas Open Meetings law.

A federal judge in West Texas ruled in April 2010 that the Texas Open Meetings Act can stand as it is. Public officials who break the law by holding secret discussions can be fined and go to jail. That hasn’t happened once since the law was passed more than 40 years ago. But that hasn’t stopped some officials from challenging the law.

The fight is not over. A lawyer challenging the law on the grounds that it violates public officials’ free-speech rights says his side will appeal. The case could end up in the U.S. Supreme Court, he says.

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The issue comes down to this: If a quorum of public officials talks to one another or to others about government business outside of an announced public meeting, are the officials violating the law?

Some elected officials say the answer is not clear. Different lawyers give them different answers. That causes confusion, they say.

“No one can answer that question as to what we can and cannot do,” says Arlington Councilman Mel LeBlanc, who testified against portions of the law at the trial.

The law “limits our ability to discuss matters legally with our constituents as well as other council members for fear of being prosecuted and imprisoned,” says Hurst Councilman Henry Wilson, who also testified at the trial.

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Keith Elkins, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, says the court challenge is based on untruths. Public officials violate the law only if enough members to make up a quorum gather and talk about public business out of the public’s eye.

“If you have four or six council members sitting at a diner having breakfast and talking about sports or Justin Bieber, that’s not a violation of the Open Meetings Act,” Elkins said. “If they’re talking about city business, it is.”

And nothing in the law prevents a public official from talking with a constituent or answering a constituent’s question, he said.

He adds, “Public officials are held to a higher standard. If they are uncomfortable, perhaps they shouldn’t run for office.”

Rod Ponton, the city attorney for Alpine and one of the lawyers challenging the law, told me, “We think the district judge was flat wrong. … Every public official in Texas that deals with [the Texas Open Meetings Act] on a daily basis knows that his First Amendment rights are being infringed upon.”

He continued, “They talk about how they can’t talk with each other except at a meeting. They can’t communicate with each other the way the members of the Legislature do. That’s a chilling of political speech. You can talk about the weather. You can talk about sports. But you can’t talk about public matters. … There’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to have informal discussions among themselves all the time.”

If they did that, though, the public may not know how government decisions are made, critics say.

Under Texas law, notice of a public meeting must be posted 72 hours before it begins. The posting includes the agenda. Only what is posted can be discussed at the meeting.

The law allows for closed meetings when officials discuss certain matters such as real estate purchases, lawsuits or some personnel issues.

Here’s an example given by Hurst Councilman Wilson at the November trial that he says shows how his free-speech rights are being violated:

The city was looking at changing its gas-drilling ordinance to toughen water and air quality standards. Because the council couldn’t discuss the issue privately, Wilson testified, the questions instead were asked of Chesapeake Energy officials in a public forum.

“We generated a very severe adversarial relationship with the drilling company that we were really looking at doing business with because the city had sold a lot of their mineral rights or given permission to the companies,” Wilson testified.

He added, “It presented a problem in our relationship with Chesapeake. … We ended up having to air all our concerns and be on the opposite side of the issues in the public with them.”

In his ruling, released last week, U.S. Judge Robert Junell writes, “Open meetings enable public discussion and discourage government secrecy and fraud.”

Public officials “are merely asked to limit their group discussions about these ideas to forums in which the public may participate.”

He continued, “Governmental bodies have no First Amendment right to conduct public business behind closed doors. TOMA ensures that governmental bodies perform their duty, which is informing Texas citizens about public affairs.”

The same judge ruled similarly in 2006. Two years ago, his ruling was reversed by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The case will now be appealed with that same Louisiana-based court.

If Junell is reversed again, the U.S. Supreme Court could eventually hear the case. At that point, the Texas case could have implications for open government across the land.

Are you tired of fighting the bank, the credit card company, the electric company and the phone company? They can be worse than scammers the way they treat customers. A popular book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, shows you how to fight back — and win! The book is available at WatchdogNation.com as a hardcover, CD audio book, e-book and hey, what else do you need? The author is The Watchdog columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Visit our store. Now revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

AVAILABLE IN HARDCOVER, ON ITUNES (AUDIO), KINDLE AND IPAD

Filed Under: Column Tagged With: FOIA, open government, open meetings, open records

How to protect yourself from mailbox theft

February 23, 2011 by Dave Lieber

Those blue postal collection boxes outside of post offices are sitting ducks for identity thieves. Getting mail out of them is as easy as licking an envelope.

Crimes occur but information is scarce

Yet the U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Postal Inspection service don’t easily release the information about mailbox break-ins to the public. Rarely, do you see these break-ins listed in police crime reports. The only way to get the information is through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

As readers of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Dave Lieber Watchdog column first learned, the problem of thefts from blue U.S. Postal Service collection boxes apparently hasn’t gotten any better in the past year. Watchdog Nation took a sample of its home Fort Worth postal district.

Mostly unreported crimes

A year ago, the Fort Worth postal district reported 60 mailbox thefts in 13 months. But in the past 11 months, there have been more than 80 incidents in the district, which includes Amarillo, Lubbock, Abilene and Decatur, too.

Most of the thefts are in Fort Worth and Arlington. (See the 3-page government release here.)

Fort Worth boxes were hit almost 40 times, with the crimes scattered throughout the city.

Arlington had 28 reported incidents. One blue collection box at 300 E. South St. was apparently hit eight times.

Other cities hit: Amarillo with five, Abilene with three, River Oaks and Euless with two each, and one each in Haslet, Haltom City, Watauga, Grand Prairie, Lubbock and Decatur.

Watchdog Nation took this photo in late 2009 of a mailbox break-in outside the Haltom City, Texas post office.

Watchdog Nation methodology

I asked for a list of all reported incidents of theft, vandalism and tampering involving the blue collection boxes in the last 11 months of 2010.

The Postal Inspection Service cautioned me about the data it sent me:

“These reports are the raw, unverified data provided by USPS employees. Some of the entries provided contain duplicate reports of possible thefts or vandalism, as well as unverified dates of possible thefts or vandalism.” (I eliminated the obvious duplicates.)

I asked for vandalism and tampering crimes, too, because it’s often hard to prove any mail was stolen, but a good indicator is whether a mailbox was vandalized or tampered with.

The data matches anecdotal evidence gleaned from readers in recent months. An Arlington man notified the Star-Telegram in December that mailbox break-ins in his city were “rampant.” A Fort Worth man contacted me in November about thefts at a collection box at the post office near South Hulen Street at 4450 Oak Park Lane (the list includes two incidents there in October).

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How bad is the problem?

John Breyault of the National Consumer League suggests that before you mail anything, you check the condition of a mailbox. “Is it in good repair? Is the lock on it secure? Does it look like it’s been tampered with somehow?”

He also offers an excellent idea: Check periodically with your residential carrier about mailbox thefts in your area.

A mailbox security expert tells me that along with thefts from mailboxes at homes, thefts at collection boxes remain a major problem nationwide.

Background

“It’s basically a crime that’s not being prosecuted because there’s too much of it to deal with,” says Michael Johnston, owner of USMailboxes. “The way I see it and experience it, it has increased tremendously in the last few years. It started out as a way for thieves to get drug money. Now the recession has made it worse.”

Ten years ago, Johnston was hired by the post office to strengthen the blue collection boxes in his home state of Oregon. “We went around and put those security bars on to help make it harder to break into without a key,” he said. “We also put a heavier lock that was harder to pick. And they put special locking nuts on the bolts in the ground so they couldn’t easily be taken off.

“I don’t know how to make them stronger. I don’t think they know either. The biggest problem up here now is they throw a chain around it and yank it out of the ground.”

The blue collection boxes are especially popular, he says, because they contain more mail, especially bill payments containing individual checks. Thieves can use the name, address, account and bank routing numbers on the checks for identity theft.

“The post office would like to remove the blue boxes,” Johnston says. “They would like to take them all off the streets and make people go to the post office or use their own mailbox to send mail out.”

What should you do?

If that’s true, the post office won’t state that publicly. In a statement to The Watchdog this week, Postal Inspection Service spokesman Michael J. Romano writes, “The Postal Service employs crime prevention countermeasures for collection box thefts, but for obvious reasons, this information is law enforcement sensitive and is not released to the public.

“We maintain that the U.S. mail is a very safe and secure way of conducting commerce with close to 600 million pieces of mail and packages successfully delivered daily.”

Still, the post office warns, “When possible, customers should avoid placing mail in a blue collection box after the last posted collection time or on a day mail is not scheduled to be picked up. If they must deposit mail during that time, they should use the lobby drop inside a post office.”

The boxes do not provide this information to consumers. But probably they should with signs. If the boxes are not completely safe, the people using them should know. Mail inside is a sitting target. That’s what the numbers show.

File your own request

If you want to file a freedom of information act request, here’s how you do it:

CHIEF POSTAL INSPECTOR
US POSTAL SERVICE
475 L’ENFANT PLAZA SW RM 3100
WASHINGTON DC 20260-2100

[Date]

FOIA REQUEST

Dear FOIA Officer:

Pursuant to the federal Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, I request access to and copies of a listing of all reported incidents of:

– theft of mail from…

– vandalism of mailbox…

– tampering with ….

the blue collection mailboxes located outside all post offices, stations, substations, etc. in the [YOUR DISTRICT] from [GIVE DATES] to the date of this letter, Dec. 31, 2010.

I agree to pay reasonable duplication fees for the processing of this request, but ask that you first alert me to the charges so I may know before any work is done. You may call me about this at xxx-xxx-xxxx or e-mail to xxxxx@xxxxx.xxx.

If my request is denied in whole or part, I ask that you justify all deletions by reference to specific exemptions of the act. I will also expect you to release all segregable portions of otherwise exempt material. I, of course, reserve the right to appeal your decision to withhold any information or to deny a waiver of fees.

I look forward to your reply within 20 business days, as the statute requires. Thank you for your assistance.

Sincerely,

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