03/16/07

Sunshine Week 2007

State open records agency says it won't help landowner any more


MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- A landowner who's made heavy use of the state's open records law in his fight with a watershed district board won't be getting any more help from a state agency that oversees compliance with the law.

Jim Stengrim, of Park Rapids, had often turned to the Information Policy and Analysis Division of the state Department of Administration, which tries to resolve disputes about access to government data by researching the law and issuing advisory opinions. The agency often sided with him.

But IPAD says Stengrim is on his own, from now on.

IPAD has told Stengrim that Administration Commissioner Dana Badgerow won't consider any more of his requests concerning the Middle-Snake-Tamarac Rivers Watershed District.

Stengrim, who owns 310 acres of land near Warren, has filed frequent open records requests in his long-running disputes with the district. While he reached a settlement last year under which the district paid for 160 acres of his land that it took for a flood control project, other disagreements such as who's responsible for maintaining a bridge in the area remain unresolved, he said Friday.

The department's director wrote him in late January saying her advisory opinions have not had much impact on the watershed district, and that there's little more they can accomplish.

"We are aware that, in some cases, advisory opinions help resolve disputes," wrote IPAD Director Laurie Beyer-Kropuenske. "We are also aware that, sometimes, they do not."

IPAD lacks enforcement authority. And Beyer-Kropuenske wrote that it seems some of the core issues in Stengrim's dispute with the watershed district aren't about data practices, but their broader disagreements.

"It just got to the point where I really felt that the issues needed to be taken up in some other forum," Badgerow said this week.

This is Sunshine Week, an annual nationwide observance organized by media organizations and other groups to combat government secrecy and bring attention to the public's right to know.

Stengrim said he'll now have to pay a lawyer go to court to pursue the district's records -- an expense he said IPAD opinions were supposed to minimize.

"IPAD is doing an injustice to me," he said.

But Beyer-Kropuenske said going to court might be Stengrim's best recourse.

"At some point you try and explain for folks the limits of what you can, in fact, do for them," she said this week.

IPAD data obtained by the Star Tribune show that requests for help in obtaining government records have been increasing since 2003 and were on pace to exceed 10,000 contacts last year.

But Beyer-Kropuenske said her agency has decided to issue fewer opinions because much of the legal ground has already been covered. Last year, IPAD issued just 33, just over a third of the record 96 opinions issued in 2001.

"With over 800 opinions already having been written, clearly some of the issues have been asked and answered before," Beyer-Kropuenske said. It doesn't make sense to issue a new opinion, she added, when the law allows people to rely on previous opinions.

Mark Anfinson, an attorney for the Minnesota Newspaper Association and an expert on open government, said he was skeptical that government agencies would treat past opinions with the same deference as those issued in a pending dispute.

And Stengrim said the decision sends a signal to the watershed district and other agencies that they can get away with ignoring IPAD's opinions and can keep resisting residents' requests for data that's supposed to be public.

Badgerow said the department -- which has just five-plus employees -- simply can't afford to issue opinions as freely as it has in the past.

"I wouldn't want to characterize our issues with this gentleman (Stengrim) as being motivated by cost, but it is a fact that the Department of Administration has had a 29 percent reduction in its general fund budget overall in the last five years," she said. IPAD gets its money from that budget, she said.

"So it is really at a bare-bones funding," she added.
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Sunshine Week: http://www.sunshineweek.org

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03/10/07

Sunshine Week 2007

Courtroom drama: Media groups seek cameras in Minn. courts

EDITORS: This story is published in conjunction with the third annual Sunshine Week, which begins Sunday. Sunshine Week is a national effort by journalism organizations to spotlight the importance of open government and freedom of information.

By STEVE KARNOWSKI
Associated Press Writer

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- When a St. Paul man went on trial for the killings of six deer hunters, an attack that shook millions of people in two states, Minnesota television viewers watched.

When a Crookston man entered his plea in the kidnapping of Dru Sjodin -- a college student whose disappearance mobilized thousands of searchers -- the public saw and heard live broadcasts from the courtroom.

But that's only because those cases unfolded in neighboring states. If either one had been tried in Minnesota, the only witnesses would have been those who could get a seat in the courtroom.

Now, a coalition of media groups is working to change that, asking the state Supreme Court to revise rules that effectively make Minnesota one of a handful of states that still keep cameras out of trial courts.

The groups plan to file their petition Monday to coincide with Sunshine Week, a nationwide effort by journalists to foster open records and freedom of information.

"It is a basic issue of the public's right to know," said Mark Anfinson, an attorney for the media groups. "Minnesota is generally a progressive state. Why are we bringing up the rear on this kind of thing?"

Opponents argue that cameras can intimidate witnesses and influence charging decisions and sentences. They also warn that cameras lead to grandstanding by attorneys and judges. The O.J. Simpson trial is the prime exhibit, but a weepy performance last month by a Florida judge in the Anna Nicole Smith case seemed to bolster the argument.

"I think it's a bad idea in that it would have some effect on lawyers and witnesses and judges tending to perform," said Jack Nordby, a Hennepin County judge for a dozen years.

The media proposal includes several restrictions they say would ensure decorum and prevent distractions, including giving judges broad authority over cameras and the right to reject them in some cases.

In the nearly 20 years since the Minnesota Supreme Court last dealt with the issue, Anfinson said, cameras have become smaller and quieter, and many courtrooms are already wired for audio and video gear. Participants "quickly forget about the fact that they're being recorded," he said.

Wisconsin, where Chai Soua Vang was convicted in the hunter slayings case, and North Dakota, where Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. initially appeared in state court in the Sjodin case, have allowed cameras in their courtrooms for several years without major problems, Anfinson said.

In Sawyer County, Wis., Judge Norman Yackel presided over the closely watched Vang case and said cameras weren't an issue. He credited Court TV, which provided a pool feed for all broadcasters, for reducing the number of cameras and personnel needed in his courtroom.

"They were very, very accommodating. They weren't disruptive or anything," Yackel said. Initial problems with shutter noise from still photographers led Yackel to bar them for a day, but that problem was quickly worked out.

Minnesota's chief justice, Russell Anderson, declined to comment on the proposal, but some trial judges are open to trying it here.

Judge Michael Kirk of Moorhead says he often sees TV reports showing courtroom proceedings just across the river in North Dakota, and said they tend to be routine, rarely sensational.

In 2005, Kirk presided over the high-profile trial of John Jason McLaughlin, who killed two fellow high school students in Cold Spring two years earlier. Kirk said having cameras present wouldn't have affected how he decided the case or what transpired in his packed courtroom, but would have let more people watch.

"It's always the fear of the unknown that kind of drives people on these issues," Kirk said. "Ultimately in Minnesota for cameras ever to be acceptable in the courtroom, you're going to have some sort of pilot project that looks at and dispels those fears, or proves them to be true."

Some prosecutors and defense attorneys said they were concerned about the effect cameras might have on crime victims.

Hennepin County prosecutor Mike Freeman said those people "almost universally ... don't want to be on camera."

Bill Mudd, a retired judge of the San Diego (Calif.) County Superior Court, said those concerns are overblown. Mudd said California's rules let him protect the few witnesses he's had who didn't want their faces shown.

"It depends on how you handle your courtroom," Mudd said.

Earl Gray, a Twin Cities defense attorney who has handled cases in Wisconsin's system, said he hasn't seen cameras deter victims or witnesses there. It hasn't been a problem in North Dakota either, said Jack McDonald, an attorney who chairs his state's official commission on cameras and the courtroom.

One defense attorney who doesn't buy the media's freedom-of-information argument is Ron Meshbesher.

"They talk very high and mighty about what good it is for the public and the constitution and everything, but in practice it is all about ratings," Meshbesher said. "I guarantee that if O.J. didn't have ratings they would have shut it off the next day."

Linda Walker, Dru Sjodin's mother, said if media succeed on the issue, it's important that they avoid sensationalism.

"The important part of the media being in there is to present the case tastefully and tactfully so as not to hurt the pain of the victims and their families," Walker said.
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On the Net:
Sunshine Week: http://www.sunshineweek.org