Cultivated Compendium

When the attorney for an apartment-building developer sent 52 Right-to-Know requests to a Pennsylvania township, that has not been without costs, the Reading Eagle reports. "Each request has led to minutes, hours or even weeks of digging out records, sending emails or conversing with attorneys - all of it tapping limited resources and money available to the small government entities," the Reading Eagle further reports. (The underlying dispute is over sewerage for the proposed apartments.)

Kim de Bourbon, executive director of the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition, told the newspaper the answer to those costs is to have documents uploaded onto government websites as a matter of course.

Legislation to amend the five-year-old legislation is currently pending in the Pennsylvania General Assembly.
 

The New York Times commentator Floyd Norris reports on a study that found that a federal law called the 2009 Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act--which requires more transparency on the fees credit card companies collect from their customers--actually worked. The researchers expected to find that, if credit card companies couldn't charge those fees anymore, they would start charging customers more interest  or  reduce consumers' access to credit. But what the study found: "It cut down the costs of credit cards, particularly for borrowers with poor credit."

An appellate court has upheld a $8,600 award in civil penalties and attorney fees against the New Orleans Police Department for violating a public records request made by the New Orleans-based Innocence Project, The Times Picayune reported. The newspaper further reported: "the local office of the Innocence Project, a non-profit legal group that seeks to exonerate wrongfully convicted defendants, sued the NOPD earlier this year after it was denied access to investigative files from a 1991 aggravated rape and burglary case. State law requires a response to the request within three days, but 65 days elapsed before City Attorney Sharonda Williams' office responded, mostly denying the request." Violators of  the public records law can face penalties of up to $100 per day.

The Associated Press reported: "The head of Hawaii's Senate judiciary committee said Saturday he expects an amended bill legalizing gay marriage to pass easily in the Senate next week, with no changes to the measure passed by the House Friday night after two grueling floor sessions and a lengthy public hearing." The legislation would allow same-sex weddings to begin on Dec. 2 in Hawaii, the AP also reported.

The Associated Press reports that "a Connecticut judge said Friday that he wants to hear the 911 recordings from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting before ruling whether they can be released to the media."The judge set a Nov. 25 hearing on whether the recordings can be sealed so he access them, the AP also reports.

When the United Nations Declaration On the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted in 2007, it was seen as a milestone in better protecting the rights of indigenous peoples to protect their lands and cultures. But it is unlikely that President Barack Obama is going to issue an executive order to enforce the declaration, the Indian Country Today Media Network reports. Yet American Indian legal experts who gathered recently say that law to enforce the principles behind the declaration are needed more than ever. Those principles are that free, prior and informed consent from indigenous peoples is necessary before policies affecting them are implemented. U.S. assistant secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn said in a speech that "free, prior and informed consent" is more like veto power, ICTMN reports.

As Twitter's initial public offering opened this week, The New York Times' DealBook reports that Twitter's "biggest potential tax shelter is its history of losing money. Like most growth companies, Twitter has accumulated a lot of operating losses. These losses, in theory, can be carried forward as net operating losses to offset future taxable income. But investors should not count on it." The net operating losses can't be carried forward as Twitter's ownership changes when "founders, venture capitalists and later-stage investors" sell their interests, the NYT reports.

A federal judge has ruled that people with disabilities were discriminated against by New York City during Superstorm Sandy. The New York Law Journal reports that "Southern District Judge Jesse Furman ruled Thursday that the city violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act and the New York City Human Rights Law in how it plans to respond to severe storms and power outages." While the judge said the discrimination against people with disabilities in getting them evacuated and housed during the storm and its aftermath was not intentional, "more needs to be done to meet the needs of the disabled in the future, especially in the evacuation of people stuck in high-rise buildings after a storm," the NYLJ further reports.

We all like tax deductions (mortgage interest deduction, anyone?). Even though JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay $13 billion to the Justice Department, corporate leaders also probably like the fact that they can claim a tax deduction on part of that settlement as an ordinary business expense. The Washington Post reports on the introduction of a Senate bill and a House of Representatives bill that would change "part of the law that lets companies receive tax deductions on payments made to resolve allegations of illegal conduct." Currently, companies cannot deduct portions of accords that are penalties or fines for violating the law, but  governmental "agencies, however, rarely spell out whether the entire monetary figure should be regarded as punitive."