Blog Posts
November 9, 2019, by Fritz Mulhauser
High costs and delay have limited public access to police body-worn camera video. This was the testimony of the D.C. Open Government Coalition and other critical witnesses at the Council’s October 21 review of the camera program. “MPD has chosen an overbroad interpretation of the law,” said Coalition witness Fritz Mulhauser (this writer). “It redacts […]
Coalition Warns of Legal Risk in WhatsApp Use in D.C. Government, Urges Mayoral Ban
November 8, 2019, by Fritz Mulhauser
The D.C. Open Government Coalition has asked D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to immediately prohibit District of Columbia government employees from using private text messaging services to conduct any official business. In a November 6 letter, Coalition President Thomas Susman warned that the WhatsApp software handles messages with technology that makes it impossible to archive them […]
October 17, 2019, by Fritz Mulhauser
The Washington Post has asked D.C. Superior Court to compel the Council to turn over records showing appointments of Councilmember Evans in 2015 and 2016. Post reporter Steve Thompson has led the way in using records obtained under the D.C. Freedom of Information act (FOIA) to show Evans’s business activities. The facts disclosed raised ethics […]
One Small Step in the D.C. Council Towards Charter School Transparency
October 14, 2019, by Fritz Mulhauser
In a brief session October 8, the D.C. Council Committee on Education passed legislation that requires all the District’s 123 charter schools to open segments of board meetings where opening or closing a school is discussed or a final budget adopted. Charter closures in the past school year, decided behind closed doors but affecting hundreds, […]
Coalition Testifies in Support of Extending D.C. FOIA to Charter Schools
October 3, 2019, by Fritz Mulhauser
In a D.C. Council hearing that stretched from morning to evening and included 83 scheduled witnesses, D.C. Open Government Coalition President Thomas Susman testified Wednesday (2) in support of expanding public records access under the D.C. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to all D.C. charter schools, not just the charter authorizing board that is covered […]
September 18, 2019, by Fritz Mulhauser
As summer ended, the Coalition gathered a bumper crop of developments to keep you posted: Charters and FOIA. A hearing October 2 will center on a bill introduced by Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) and four others to include charter schools in the D.C. public records law (FOIA), the biggest change since the law was extended […]
August 24, 2019, by Fritz Mulhauser
Update 3/17/20: Office of the D.C. Deputy Mayor for Education said they had no record showing the school names we requested. Seems implausible, as DME Kihn discussed the topic at length in emails with the community. But we’ll leave that for another day. We refiled the same request to D.C. Public Schools. They claimed our […]
July 22, 2019, by Fritz Mulhauser
The D.C. Council has wrapped up the Fiscal Year 2020 budget but held an eight-hour hearing June 26 on process details: how to allocate and track education dollars flowing to schools in the traditional system, especially special funds intended to help the neediest students, that the D.C. Auditor reported recently had likely been misspent for […]
July 19, 2019, by Fritz Mulhauser
Are records of a public police discipline hearing, including the transcript and exhibits, to be locked away afterwards as though it never happened? MPD in March denied such a records request by the Public Defender Service and has not responded to a decision by the mayor overruling that denial. Now the case has landed in […]
The Letter With Facts About Charter School Transparency the Washington Post Didn’t Print
May 21, 2019, by Fritz Mulhauser
The costs and burdens of allowing public access to charter school records in the District of Columbia seemed exaggerated in a Washington Post “Local Opinion” piece by Lis Kidder earlier this month. Her projections were far-fetched (and her sources unexplained). I wrote the letter below from my own experience. To the Editors: In my 20 […]
