Ohio Supreme Court Chooses To Hide Unseen Documents From Public Scrutiny

Plunderbund is very disappointed in issued last week by the Ohio Supreme Court related to our lawsuit against the Kasich administration for public records related to threats against the governor.  We believe it is one of the most damaging decisions impacting open government in years.

The court has effectively granted carte blanche to anyone in government to hide virtually any document by simply claiming it is a “security document” just like the Ohio Highway Patrol and the Ohio Department of Public Safety have done with the records we requested and were denied.

As the ACLU of Ohio in support of our lawsuit, the “information contained in these records is invaluable as a tool for public scrutiny of government activity and any confidential or personal information that is not relevant to that scrutiny can be redacted. “

Our attorney Victoria Ullmann made it clear that “much of Plunderbund’s argument before the court focused on the fact that the documents requested were incident reports that the Court itself has said are open records. The Court did not address this argument at all.”

Because Public Safety refused to produce the documents, neither their lawyers nor the Court have any idea what is contained in the documents they have chosen to forever hide from public scrutiny.