August Rudisell/The Lawrence Times
Incoming Lawrence Chief of Police Rich Lockhart will start his job with an annual salary of $156,035, expenses for moving, and a vacation perk on par with city staff employed 6-10 years.
Carlos Moreno / KCUR 89.3
Emails between an auditing firm and Kansas show how quickly the state bent to the company’s wishes to keep information out of public view. Experts say this reflects a disturbing national trend.
Crysta Henthorne / KCUR 89.3
A state agency is defending its blacking out of much of a report commissioned with tax dollars. It says it was accommodating a contractor that argued the redactions were needed to protect trade secrets.
Kylie Cameron / KMUW
The Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office and Kansas Bureau of Investigations continue to investigate the death of a teen who died while in custody earlier this week.
KU Libraries Exhibits
The KBI will, at least temporarily, continue to keep in the dark records that could finally shed light on a case of police violence that has been imprinted in the fabric of Lawrence for exactly 51 years.
Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector
An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas says the state’s open records law might as well not exist if Secretary of State Scott Schwab is allowed to keep public information hidden by reconfiguring software.
Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector
The Kansas Supreme Court dealt with a decision by the Kansas Court of Appeals by focusing on jurisdictional issues without defining boundaries of the Kansas Open Records Act as it pertained to public access to audio records of district court proceedings.
Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector; file
KORA’s guiding precept is that it “shall be liberally construed to promote” the state’s policy that government records be reasonably available to the public. Unfortunately, in recently ruling on a KORA complaint filed by Kansas Reflector, Attorney General Derek Schmidt’s office did the opposite, Max Kautsch writes.
