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Judge Orders Dallas To Release E-Mails
by Michael Martinez
A Texas judge this week ruled that municipal officials in Dallas must hand over e-mails from handheld devices and personal accounts that were requested nearly two years ago by reporters. It is the first time the state's public-records law has been extended to e-mail correspondence.
District Judge Gena Slaughter ordered the city to make the records available to reporters from The Dallas Morning News who requested them in 2005 as part of an investigation into a multimillion-dollar tax abatement for the new downtown headquarters for Hunt Consolidated, a high-profile holding company for the oil and real-estate businesses.
The newspaper sued to obtain the e-mails after separate public information requests by reporters were denied. According to the newspaper, Slaughter ruled that the e-mails by several public officials, including City Manager Mary Suhm, former Mayor Laura Miller and Housing Director Jerry Killingsworth, are not protected under any exemptions in the public-records law.
In addition to ordering the release of the messages, Slaughter ruled that the city should cover the newspaper's legal fees.
David Starr, vice president and deputy general counsel of Belo, the newspaper's parent company, said the case is a significant one. He claimed it demonstrated that e-mails and electronic messages discussing city business should not be treated differently than other forms of correspondence.
In other news, The Kansas City Star reported this week that the office of Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt refused to give a lawyer it fired records about his termination.
Scott Eckersley, a Blunt administration lawyer claims he lost his job in September after he challenged the governor's policy on deleting e-mails. Blunt's office released hundreds of pages of e-mails and documents about Eckersley the day it refused to provide the records about his firing.
The files released by the Republican governor suggested Eckersley may have liked illegal drugs and "group sex," according to the Star. Eckersley insists he is the victim of character assassination, but Blunt said in a news conference that Eckersley was fired because he was working for another company at the same time he had a position in the administration.
Earlier this fall, Blunt acknowledged that his office routinely purges its e-mails. State Attorney General Jay Nixon, a potential 2008 Democratic gubernatorial candidate, has said publicly that e-mails are covered by the state's open-records law.
A study released this week, meanwhile, suggested that most states are failing to respond adequately to freedom-of-information requests. The Better Government Association and National Freedom of Information Coalition gave 38 states failing grades on how they responded to such requests.
The coalition's executive director, Charles Davis, said in a news release that the report is a "cry for reform" of freedom-of-information laws.
Computer Problems Stall N.D. Medicaid Payments
Computer glitches have quadrupled the number of unpaid Medicaid claims in North Dakota, according to state officials.
AP reported that Maggie Anderson, the director of the Medical Services Division at the North Dakota Department of Human Services, said this week that compatibility issues between the state's aging computer system and the federal Medicaid information entered into it have resulted in nearly 90,000 unprocessed claims. She said that number is usually closer to 25,000.
As a result, medical providers are being forced to wait longer to be reimbursed. An administrator at the Mountrail County Medical Center in Stanley, N.D., said his office is waiting on about $30,000 worth of claims.
North Dakota lawmakers have approved $62.5 million to upgrade the state's Medicaid computer system. Officials expect the new system will be in place sometime by mid-2009.
In other news, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine last Friday announced the launch of an online registry that allows consumers to compare and research prices for prescription drugs. The database will contain the prices for the 150 most-frequently prescribed drugs in New Jersey pharmacies. Corzine has advertised the tool as a mechanism that will provide consumers access to more affordable care and encourage competition among vendors.
Sy Larson, president of the seniors' group AARP in New Jersey, said in a statement that too many seniors have been forced to make tough purchasing decisions about drugs they need. "Many consumers who must pay full retail price for their prescriptions are either cutting their doses or skipping them altogether, with potentially harmful consequences," Larson said.
The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, meanwhile, announced Tuesday that residents now can go online to apply for Medicaid enrollment. The online application also will allow residents to sign up for coverage for children and pregnant women, as well as other medical insurance programs.
San Francisco Gets Millions For Transit Cameras
California's homeland security office this week provided San Francisco with $5.4 million to install new security cameras on its mass-transit system.
State Homeland Security Director Matthew Bettenhausen on Monday directed the money to the city so it can implement infrastructure, security and public-safety upgrades cleared by a bond measure approved by voters last fall. That bond measure authorized $20 billion to enhance the security of the transit system and ports.
Officials from San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit system declined to comment on how many cameras they plan to install this week. BART Board of Directors President Lynette Sweet said that for security reasons, the city will not disclose where it intends to install the devices and how many will be purchased.
BART Director Carol Ward Allen said in a news release that cameras are more than anti-terrorism tools. She also said the funding will help the city upgrade its existing surveillance infrastructure so all cameras are standardized.
"In this day and age, when people think about security, they usually think terrorism," she said. "But these cameras will also help BART Police fight regular crime as well."
The BART system has spent $46 million on security upgrades since the 2001 terrorist attacks against New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon near Washington. BART officials claim they need $250 million to cover all security needs, including chemical, biological and radiological detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs.
BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger said the bond measure is supplying much-needed cash because there is no way the city would be able afford those items through fare revenues. "That's why we must rely upon other sources of revenue," she said.
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