As anyone with a computer knows, information about nearly everything is now just a mouse click away. So why is it that so many public records remain hidden?
A new nationwide survey of state government information online concludes that while “Americans can easily find videos of water-skiing squirrels on the Internet … they’ll have less luck finding out whether their children’s school buses and classrooms are safe, or if neighborhood gas stations are overcharging.”
The study, conducted by Sunshine Week, an alliance of open-records advocates, and released Sunday, found that death certificates are accessible online in only five states; records of gas stations found to have pumps that register falsely high amounts of fuel going into customers’ tanks are available in only eight states; and records of school bus inspection reports are posted in only 13 states.
Some states are making progress, but problems persist everywhere:
*In Connecticut, anyone seeking a state official’s financial disclosure report — a key to looking for political and financial conflicts of interest — must e-mail a request; whether the request will be honored is, believe it or not, at the discretion of the governor. In Maine, the law requires that financial disclosure reports be posted on the Web — but they aren’t.
*In Colorado, bridge inspection reports are considered public, but they aren’t published online. In Louisiana, a researcher asking about putting bridge inspections online was told, astoundingly, “We have a problem with the legality of it.”
*In Oklahoma, hospital inspection reports are viewed as “confidential,” and gas-pump overcharge records, once available, no longer are.
*In Delaware, a legislative proposal last year to establish a searchable database “to allow taxpayers to access details of how their tax dollars are being spent” never got out of committee. Rhode Island has an online database of statewide expenditures — but you have to be…