Dave Hubin writes a glowing report on Dave Hubin’s Public Records Office, for UO’s official “Around the 0” blog: “The UO is open with its information, much of which is available in many places, and our hope is to consolidate some of the existing information and make it more accessible for public records requesters,”…
Posts tagged as “Public Records”
9/22/2014: Troy Brynelson has the interview in the ODE: Coltrane also inherited an administration derided for its opaqueness. He quickly became a favorite of the faculty for his openness, hosting public forums and city hall-style meetings for people across the school to chime in on issues. “The administration and the…
9/18/2014 update: Excluding duplicates, UO has received roughly 40 public records requests in the 90 days since June 18. Log here. That’s roughly two requests every three working days. They’ve got two staff, plus help from the GC’s office on redactions. Some requests are complicated, but many are simply asking…
9/17/2014 update #2: Page down for the response from the District Attorney’s Office to the UO Public Records Office, and interim General Counsel Doug Park. 9/17/2014 update #1: Page down for a new letter to the District Attorney’s Office, with a cc to Mr. Park. 9/16/2014: Here’s my polite followup…
That would be at Chicago State University. Apparently the president fired a university attorney who refused to go along with an attempt to hide public records. This would never happen at the University of Oregon. A new judge has just affirmed the verdict against the president and board of trustees,…
7/23/2014: I thought I’d repost this classic on the meetings of Dave Hubin’s working group to hide public records. From what I can tell this group has now accomplished its mission and is defunct.
6/5/2013 meeting, page down for 3/7/2013 meeting.
Prologue:
- Last meeting (see below) was a disaster for Hubin and Thornton, who got raked over the coals and revealed that there were serious problems with the office’s decisions about fee-waivers, bad software, refusal or complete inability to answer questions about policies, inconsistent statements, no decision on the STC recommendation for fee-waivers for student journalists.
Synopsis:
- Dave didn’t even tell UO’s student-journalists that the meeting was being held, they found out about it from UO Matters.
- Faculty and students not allowed to ask questions.
- Thornton killed a bunch of committee time with irrelevant numbers, worked well.
- No progress on public-interest fee waiver policies. Still a black hole. Thornton’s statements just added to the mystery of what current policy is. Still seems like she has *never* given a full fee-waiver.
- In Feb the STC voted unanimously to recommend Gottfredson waive fees for student-journalists, up to some reasonable limit, with Hubin to determine what’s reasonable. Gottfredson won’t do it, claims he’s studying the issue. He was provost at UC-I, where there are no fees for anyone (except for computer programming time, if that’s required.) So Gottfredson already knows how well this would work, and he just doesn’t want the students to be able to get information on how UO is spending their money.
Live-blog disclaimer: My opinions on what people said or would have said, if they only had a spine.
The Senate Ad Hoc Freedom Committee, chaired by Michael Dreiling (Sociology prof and faculty union president) has now met several times with President Gottfredson and his advisers. The Committee has posted its draft Academic Freedom policy on the Senate website, here, along with an explanatory memo. (Full disclosure: I am part…
Bennett Hall has an excellent story in the Corvallis Gazette Times: Oregon State University student media adviser Kate Willson thought she was just doing her job when she filed a public records request with the university. Now she’s worried it could get her fired. OSU’s chief spokesman says Willson’s job…
9/22/2013: Thanks to UO Professor Kyu Ho Youm’s excellent twitter feed for the link: Full pdf here. Of course a law doesn’t create transparency and trust if those in power have things to hide, and can find willing stooges to help them do so.
9/9/2013: An adamant state judge sternly warned the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors on Monday that it faces possible imprisonment if it does not immediately comply with her more than four-month-old order to make public the records of its secret presidential search…. Clark ruled Aug. 14 that the board…
9/5/2013 update: The data I just bought from President Gottfredson’s public records office includes salary, but not extra stipends taken as salary or other compensation. These are reported every three months in the quarterly reports on UO’s Institutional Research page here. (Stipends that faculty use to support research and teaching…
9/2/2013: Drew Hendricks, a handyman in Port Madlock WA, started out making public records requests to his local police department, asking if they were using cameras to record his license plate: What he eventually found led to a major story in the NY Times today uncovering a massive secret database of…
8/30/2013: Thanks for all the U of Nike t-shirt purchases and google ad revenue: I’ve almost got enough money to pay Dave Hubin’s public records office the $225.56 they want to provide info on the authors of the admin bargaining team’s harassing “open letter to Professor Harbaugh”. Please help out. Buy a…
8/14/2013 update: Oregon’s public record situation is also worse than Lousiana’s: A Louisiana university was found in contempt of court Wednesday for its failure to produce records related to its recent presidential search. The order of contempt — and $500 per day fine that accompanied it — is the latest in a…
8/14/2013 update: Finally got one page from Geller’s office on HLGR billing issues, in which Rudnick’s firm promises to be more vigilant in the future. 6/23/2013. Surely someone in Randy Geller’s GC office has responsibility for looking over the billable hours, checking productivity, asking questions about the inevitable little mistakes…