News & Commentary

In court papers filed today, the ACLU has asked for a prompt hearing on its request for a preliminary injunction against the R.I. Board of Education for violating open government laws in dealing with the its controversial “high stakes testing” mandate. The ACLU’s motion asks the Court to order the Board to reconsider in open session a secret discussion and vote it took two weeks ago, rejecting, by a vote of 6-5, a petition filed in June by seventeen organizations seeking a public hearing on repealing the Board’s “high stakes testing” graduation requirement.

For the third time in less than two months, the ACLU of Rhode Island has taken legal action against the R.I. Board of Education for violating open government laws in dealing with the Board’s controversial “high stakes testing” mandate. The ACLU called the Board’s lack of transparency on this divisive issue “a refutation of the openness in government that Governor Chafee has so often promoted.”

Four open government organizations have called on RI General Treasurer Gina Raimondo to more fully release documents about the state’s hedge fund investments that were recently provided in heavily redacted form to the Providence Journal. The organizations – the ACLU of RI, Common Cause RI, the RI Press Association, and the League of Women Voters of RI – sent a letter to Raimondo saying they were “troubled” by her office’s response to the Journal’s public records request for the “due diligence” reports prepared by the state’s hedge fund advisor Cliffwater, and for certain other hedge fund documents.

Finding that there would be “substantial and irreparable harm” if members of the public were prohibited from attending, R.I. Superior Court Judge Daniel Procaccini today issued an order barring the R.I. Board of Education from meeting in private at a retreat later this month to hear from invited “experts” on the issue of its “high stakes testing” requirement for high school seniors. In issuing a preliminary injunction against the planned private discussion of the issue, the judge agreed with the ACLU that allowing such a discussion to take place in private would significantly undermine the open meetings law’s purpose.

Read statements regarding the filing of an open meetings lawsuit against the R.I. Board of Education over its plans later this month to meet in a private retreat, closed to the public and the media, in order to hear from invited “experts” on the issue of its “high stakes testing” requirement for high school seniors:

The ACLU of Rhode Island today filed an open meetings lawsuit against the R.I. Board of Education over its plans later this month to meet in a private retreat, closed to the public and the media, in order to hear from invited “experts” on the issue of its “high stakes testing” requirement for high school seniors. The ACLU argues that allowing such a private meeting would significantly undermine the open meetings law’s purpose.

The ACLU of Rhode Island issued the following statement today in response to the consideration of legislation by the General Assembly that would amend current laws addressing school safety plans:

Below is a statement issued today by Common Cause/RI and the ACLU of Rhode Island regarding the controversy over the Governor’s refusal to publicly release a report he commissioned on Medicaid and food stamp fraud:

Between 1999 and June 2012, the Attorney General’s office filed lawsuits against public bodies for violating the state’s Access to Public Records Act (APRA) on only six occasions, less than 4% of the time after finding that violations of the law had been committed. That is one of the findings of a report issued today by the ACLU of Rhode Island, which examines past enforcement of the open records law by the AG’s office and urges stronger enforcement in the future.