SOME FOIA VICTORIES BUT GOVERNMENT INFORMATION STILL ISN'T ALL THAT FREE

DOUGLAS LEE, FIRST AMENDMENT CENTER - Open-government advocates who see the glass as half-full likely are rejoicing over their string of victories during the last few weeks. Those who see the glass as half-empty, however, probably are just shaking their heads. This month, freedom of information fighters have:

- Loosened rules on press access to California prisons.

- Used four states' open-records laws to obtain court-settlement documents

- Invoked a federal law to compel the Bush administration to issue global-warming reports.

- Persuaded a Connecticut state commission to void a policy that made it difficult for prison inmates to use the state's freedom of information act.

Those who are more restrained, of course, also welcome these victories. At the same time, however, they rue the seductive secrecy that has crept into every level of government and now rationalizes denials of even the most basic requests for information.

Take, for example, the case of the Maricopa County, Ariz., sheriff's office, which removed the West Valley View from its news-release distribution list because the newspaper hadn't covered story ideas suggested by the sheriff. When the newspaper's lawyer complained, the sheriff refused to respond, apparently taking the view that he would provide the news releases only if the paper filed a state FOIA request for each one.

Given the pettiness of the issue, one would have expected the dispute to end when the trial judge ruled the sheriff must honor the paper's blanket request for all future news releases. Instead, however, the sheriff appealed to the Arizona Court of Appeals, which unanimously affirmed the trial court. Still unhappy, the sheriff said he would appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court.