Thanksgiving Edition!
Ohio Public Records Briefing - Edition #101
Welcome back to the Public Record Briefing! It’s a short week, but we’ll make sure this edition is long on fun!
ALERT: While it’s not directly about public records, we’re offering a Webinar next week that is relevant to all government employees who deal with communications. It’s not part of the Public Records Briefing membership, but you will likely find it very valuable. We’ll cover all of the law surrounding what comments can be deleted from government Facebook pages. Unlike public records law, if you get this area of law wrong, you can be sued personally, putting your own money at risk. It will be Tuesday December 2 at Noon. Sign up now or send this sign up link to whoever in your agency runs the Facebook or other social media feeds.
Speaking of webinars, mark your calendars for December 10 and join us for another incredible Public Records Briefing Webinar. As always, we do it over your lunch hour, so be sure to order your lunch here. The Webinar topic is still being finalized. Do you have a good idea for a topic? If so, send it our way!
Exceptions (a) through (bbb): R.C. 149.43 (aaa)
Exactly 100 issues ago, when we started with R.C. 149.43(A)(1)(a), it seemed like we’d never get to the end. Now, here we are in triple letters with only two exceptions left to go! If the General Assembly doesn’t add any new exceptions (and they should be done legislating for the year), we only have one more exception to go. Sad, right?
Let’s talk about (aaa), and we don’t mean minor league baseball or the roadside assistance group. No this new exception was designed to protect that poor, underrepresented group of people: elected officials! Yep, this exception allows a public office to withhold an elected official’s future calendar entries. That means someone may request the calendar for an elected official for the previous day and any time before that. However, the calendar for any day that hasn’t happened yet (you know, the future) doesn’t have to be shared.