I’ve got a backlog of recent sunshine law items from across the country.

• A New Jersey appeals court ruled this week that settlement documents from lawsuits involving a public agency must be disclosed under the state’s Open Public Records Act, even if the documents are maintained by a third party, such as an outside attorney or insurance company.

The plaintiff in the case was supported by the ACLU and the North Jersey Media Group, which filed a supporting brief.

The court found:

Were we to conclude otherwise, a governmental agency seeking to protect its records from scrutiny could simply delegate their creation to third parties or relinquish possession to such parties, thereby thwarting the policy of transparency that underlies OPRA. N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1. We find the public interest in settlements to be a significant one, since such settlements may provide valuable information regarding the conduct of governmental officials and the condition of government property. We reject any narrowing legal position in this matter that would provide grounds for impeding access to such documents.

By the way, the New Jersey decision was easily located on the NJ Courts web site.

• “Is a meeting really ‘open to the public’ when there isn’t room for the public?”

That’s the rhetorical question asked by an editorial at TCPalm.com, web site of the E.W. Scripps Treasure Coast newspapers in Southern Florida.

The editorial begins:

Florida’s Government in the Sunshine Law ensures public access to government meetings.

The law presupposes adequate meeting space will be provided to accommodate a reasonable number of people who attend such meetings.

If the meeting room is too small, it essentially amounts to a denial of the public’s statutory right to participate.

This is the kind of thing that does happen here. There are also many situations in which public agency records should be open, but facilities for the public to actually inspect those documents are lacking.

• The Akron Beacon Journal reports on a court ruling that a local school board repeatedly violated that state’s sunshine law by straying off topic during closed executive sessions to discuss issues that should have been dealt with in public.

For example, at the Oct. 3, 2007, meeting, the board announced it was closing the meeting to the public to discuss personnel matters, but instead talked about the superintendent’s plans to renovate his own office and other offices in the ”executive suite” of offices, according to the decision.

”Such action fails to qualify as a proper subject to be discussed at executive sessions . . . and is representative of the board’s willful and intentional disregard for the law, with intent to hide matters that the public should have been made aware of,” the decision says.

At a meeting on June 22, 2006, the board told the public it was going into executive session to talk about personnel matters, but once behind closed doors, board members talked about leases related to drilling oil and gas wells on district property.

”Again, such activity was in blatant violation of the purposes allowed for executive sessions,” the decision says.

Further information, as well as links to the court ruling, can be found on the newspaper’s education blog.

The Beacon Journal and both of Honolulu’s daily newspapers are now owned by David Black.

• Here at home, the Hawaii Tourism Association has called on Gov. Lingle to veto a bill that would allow the Hawaii Tourism Authority to keep more of its marketing information secret.

Please veto SB2187, CD1 – a bill that enables the Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) to hide its decision-making. I am concerned that HTA has made serious mistakes in allocating its marketing budget, relying on going back to existing markets over and over, at the expense of developing new markets. Yes, HTA devotes some effort to China and Korea, but Europe is virtually ignored – and Latin America, most of SE Asia, India and the rich Middle East markets are left out. HTA doesn’t participate in the world’s major travel trade shows. We need to see how and why their $88 million is spent, and have opportunity to comment before decisions are made.

Additional details of the criticism of marketing in Europe can be found in this blog post, which takes a closer look at marketing data.

The veto call also drew a sharp comment from Hawaii musician, Makana.

The Hawaii Tourism Association was formed last year by Thomas Steinmetz, a critic of the Tourism Authority.