The Indiana Publisher

Page 8 July 10, 2014 M arion Superior Court Judge Cynthia Ayers has been asked to determine whether a series of emails sent by state Board of Education members equates to a meeting under the Open Door Law. At the conclusion of a hear- ing on the lawsuit in late June, Ayers reportedly asked both sides to submit proposed final orders. Indianapolis attorney Willliam Groth filed the law- suit in December for Indiana residents Ed Eiler, Anthony Lux, Catherine Fuentes- Rohwer and Julie Hollings- worth. The lawsuit alleges the board violated the Open Door Law through an exchange of emails in October initiated by Claire Fiddian-Green, special assis- tant to the governor for edu- cation innovation. Fiddian-Green asked board members to approve a letter asking State Senate President Pro Tem David Long, R-Fort Wayne, and Speaker of the House Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, to instruct its Legislative Services Agency to obtain data from the state Department of Education to calculate the A-F grades for schools. The concern was in reac- tion to delays in the calcu- lation of the grades by the department under the juris- diction of Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz. According to the lawsuit, the emails from Fiddian- Green asked the 10 board members appointed by Gov. Mike Pence to authorize the use of their signatures in the letter and ratify the sending of the letter to the two legis- lative leaders. Groth's filing argued that the email exchange consti- tutes a meeting under the Open Door law because it was a "gathering" of a major- ity of the board for the pur- pose of taking official action on public business. Groth argues that the email exchanges would be equivalent to a physical gathering of a board major- ity, which triggers the Open Door Law if the purpose is to conduct action on public business. Prior to filing the lawsuit, the plaintiffs asked for an opinion from state Public Access Counselor Luke Britt. Britt noted that the ques- tion had not been addressed by a court and therefore he couldn't say if a violation had occurred. I would agree with that conclusion. Emails are con- sidered records under the Access to Public Records Act. I would not be able to argue that the legislature intended emails to trigger the Open Door Law with its requisite 48 hours notice to the public and public right to observe and record. A ruling by Ayers in favor of the plaintiffs would change the landscape dramatically as to the definition of a meet- ing. I expect a ruling in favor of the Board of Education, but the problem remains of how to handle boards that conduct business via email rather than at a public meet- ing. If all the public sees is a vote ratifying the deci- sions reached through an email consensus, will they be robbed of the opportunity to hear the debate on the issue and see which mem- bers advocated a position or opposed it? The public can ask to inspect and copy the emails, but those emails may not be produced for days, maybe weeks. This type of accountabil- ity also requires the public at large to know what it is entitled to see under the Access to Public Records Act. I don't believe the legis- lature wants to discourage the convenience of emails to get public business done, but maintaining govern- ment transparency becomes an issue when decisions by boards are only aired as a public vote with no debate seen or heard by Hoosiers. The situation doesn't sat- isfy the legislative intent that "all persons are enti- tled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those who represent them as public offi- cials." Steve Key is executive director and general counsel for HSPA. Key Points By Steve Key Plaintiffs: Emails constitute meeting CALL US TODAY For a quote on your next printing job. FULL SERVICE PRINTING, BINDERY & MAILING Your Indiana printing company O n e f a m i l y - 1 4 0 y e a r s HNEprinting.com Commercial Web & Sheetfed Printing Personalized Customer Service Mailing & Fulfillment Resources // Quick Turnaround Two Central Indiana Production Facilities 812-342-1056 3330 W. International Ct, Columbus 317-462-5528 22 W. New Road, Greenfield bstone@hneprinting.com T he Library of Congress recently ingested another 12,533 historic Indiana newspaper pages into its Chronicling America archiving website. This brings the total number of Indiana news- paper pages to about 100,000 in the grant-funded Chronicling America effort. The content includes newspapers from Brookville, Indianapolis, Jasper, Plymouth, Terre Haute and Winchester, said S. Chandler Lighty, digital initiatives consultant and newspaper digitization program manager for the Indiana State Library. "We are moving ahead with digitizing another 100,000 newspaper pages as a continuation of our grant," Lighty said. "Over the coming months and year, historic digitized newspapers from South Bend, Evansville, and Vincennes will be available." Federal grants allow Indiana State Library staff members to digitize the newspapers as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. The effort is a long-term effort to develop an Internet- based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and historic pages. A full list of digitized news papers is available at chroniclingamerica.loc.gov. Chronicling America, created by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., provides free online access to historic newspapers. Indiana State Library staff members have been working for over two years to digitize a selection of Indiana's historically significant newspapers. As part of the state lib- rary's newspaper digitization efforts, the titles also are available via the Indiana Memory website at digital.library.in.gov. The site features digitized newspapers, books, manu- scripts, photographs, maps and other media. The Indiana Memory newspaper collection contains 14,214 issues comprising 95,455 pages. The newspaper section of Indiana Memory is displayed using Veridian software, which allows users to correct the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) text. Those who have done historical research with digitized content know that the search results are only as good as the OCR, Lighty said. The crowd-sourcing com- ponent of Veridian allows users to register and make corrections to the text. For instance, if users find names garbled in the OCR, they can correct them so future users can find those names easier. "I'm really excited about Veridian, especially the crowd-sourcing function, and I'll be interested to see how people use it," Lighty said. Political advertising resources Increase sales to political advertising clients with HSPA's free customizable brochure, handout, PowerPoint document and more. Download materials at hspa.com/2014political Efforts continue to digitize Indiana's historic newspapers Digitize papers The Indiana State Library wants to digit ize more historic Indiana news papers. Hoosier publishers can direct inquires to Chandler Lighty at clighty@library.in.gov or (317) 232-3681.

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