Frontlines

Probe targets 5 years of school board meetings

SEGUIN — Members of the Guadalupe County Attorney’s Office and the state Attorney General’s Office are investigating complaints that the Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District failed to keep record of closed meetings dating back five years, the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise reported.

Two retired SCUCISD educators told the county attorney’s office late last year about the school district’s failure to document meetings from April 22, 1999 to Oct. 16, 2003.

The school district was unable to provide record of the meetings to the county attorney’s office and called it an “oversight.”

The Texas Open Meetings Act requires either a certified agenda or tape recording of all closed meetings.

Sheriff release K-9 financial records

TYLER — The Smith County Sheriff’s Department has agreed to comply with a Texas Attorney General’s Office ruling and make public the financial records of the sher

iff’s non-audited K-9 and Livestock Fund, the Tyler Morning Telegraph reported.

The attorney general ruled that the fund should be disclosed after the Telegraph made a Jan. 23 request through the Texas Public Information Act, asking for copies of all K-9 account activities for the past 10 years.

Officials said the cost of obtaining the copies would be $1,712.50 and the newspaper agreed to pay the fee.

Harris County withholds autopsy records

HOUSTON — The Harris County medical examiners office may withhold autopsy reports or delay their release at the behest of local law enforcement agencies under a new policy that open-records advocates say will impede the public’s right to information, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Autopsy reports are public record under state law. However, the new policy, which went into effect about a month ago, appears to allow the medical examiner’s office to delay the release of an autopsy report from a homicide case far beyond the dead

lines set by the Texas Public Information Act, the Chronicle reported.

The policy also apparently gives local police agencies and the district attorney greater influence over when a report should be released, if it is part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

 

Texas Tech, student settle case on autopsy news article

LUBBOCK — Texas Tech University’s medical school and a student settled a lawsuit alleging the school improperly expelled the student over his description of an autopsy in the school newspaper, The Associated Press reported.

Sandeep Rao, a former opinions editor and columnist for the University Daily, sued Tech in 2002, alleging his freedom of speech had been violated. He was expelled a month earlier for allegedly violating a confidentiality agreement regarding the autopsy he viewed as part of a class assignment.

The settlement is not an admission of liability or wrongdoing by Tech’s medical school, court documents state. Tech will pay Rao’s attorney fees of $74,351.