RI ACLU Files Appeal With Supreme Court on Open Records in Google Settlement Case

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

GoLocalProv News Team

ACLU asserts Neronha's position severely limits access to public records

The ACLU of Rhode Island filed an appeal to the RI Supreme Court on Tuesday asking them to address open records issues regarding the Google settlement fund case.

The filing sets up a battle between the ACLU and open government groups with newly elected Attorney General Peter Neronha.

The appeal was filed on behalf of former House Minority Leader Patrica Morgan, whose access to documents regarding the Attorney General’s spending of over $50 million in funds from the settlement has been prevented.

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“The Attorney General’s position represents one of the most significant challenges to the public’s right to know under the state’s Access to Public Records Act since its enactment. To the best of our knowledge, until this case, no government agency had ever interpreted this APRA exemption in the extraordinary way the Attorney General has done. Government business is routinely conducted via memoranda. The AG’s position that every memorandum generated by state and municipal agencies can be kept secret unless the agency, out of pure largesse, agrees to release it is a direct assault on transparency in, and the very concept of, open government. We are hopeful this appeal will lead to an overturning of this appalling position,” said ACLU of RI Executive Director Steven Brown.

Read the Appeal Here

The ACLU’s appeal will also be challenging the AG’s redaction of all purchase order and invoice numbers for alleged security reasons, even though the state Department of Administration always requests, and sometimes requires, those numbers in order to retrieve bids and contracts for the public.

Google Settlement Fund Case

Rhode Island received $230 million from Google as part of a settlement by the company which allowed the selling of illegal prescription drugs on their platform.

Morgan paid $3,700 to obtain a first set of documents in response to her APRA request, but Superior Court Judge Melissa Long agreed to waive over $4,000 in fees that the AG was set to charge for a second batch of records.

However, the judge denied Morgan’s request to have documents, such as the “lapel pin” memorandum, released to her in unredacted form.

About the appeal, the RI ACLU writes:

The Attorney General has used this case, which Morgan filed pro se last year, to argue that any government document constituting a memorandum is exempt from disclosure under APRA. The AG has cited a provision in APRA that allows for the non-disclosure of “preliminary drafts, notes, impressions, memoranda, working papers, and work product.” In a “friend of the court” brief filed last October in Superior Court, the ACLU had argued that the cited exemption was clearly designed to address unfinished business documents, since every other type of record cited in it – drafts, notes, impressions, and working papers – follows from the initial key word “preliminary,” and contains an element of incompleteness or tentativeness.

But, without explaining its reasoning, the Superior Court upheld the AG’s actions, including the complete black-out of a memo dealing with the purchase – using Google settlement funds – of “lapel pins and challenge coins” for the AG’s staff. The state’s new Attorney General, Peter Neronha, has reaffirmed the agency’s position that all government memoranda are exempt from disclosure to the public, stating only that his office would exercise its discretion and “evaluate the nature and substance of the document when deciding whether it should be released.”

RI ACLU Files Appeal With Supreme Court on Open Records in Google Settlement Case

Read the Appeal Here

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