Here's a collection of open government resources available to all Ohioans.

Sunshine Law Webinar

During Sunshine Week 2017 the Ohio Coalition for Open Government and the Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union hosted a webinar on how to make open government requests.

• Click here to download a recording of the webinar.
• Click here to download the presentation file.
   

Access with Attitude

“Access with Attitude: An Advocate’s Guide to Freedom of Information in Ohio” is an essential user’s guide to navigating the complexities and occasional weirdness of Ohio’s open records laws. Marburger, an attorney with BakerHostetler in Cleveland, is a member of the OCOG committee and has represented many ONA members in Sunshine Law cases.  Idsvoog is a journalism professor at Kent State and an award-winning investigative reporter.

The retail price for the book is $29.95, but Ohio University Press is offering ONA members a 30 percent discount on orders between one to four copies. To get the discount, use discount code M1121 when ordering on the Ohio University Press website, www.ohioswallow.com.

For a 40 percent discount on orders of five or more books, contact Ohio University Press’s business manager, Kristi Goldsberry, at (740) 593-1156 or goldsbek@ohio.edu.
 

Open Government Guide

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has released the latest version of its guide to open government laws in all 50 states, including Ohio. It’s easy to search and should be a great, handy reference tool for journalists. Click here for a link you can add as a bookmark in your browser. Attorneys David Marburger and Jack Blanton of Baker & Hostetler in Cleveland prepared the Ohio section.
 

ACLU guide to Ohio open meetings and public records

• Click here for the ACLU’s downloadable guide to Ohio open meetings and public records.
   

Ohio Attorney General’s sunshine law resources

The office of the Ohio Attorney General offers several resources on the states’s sunshine laws, including:

• The 2018 Sunshine Law Manual
• Informational videos on Ohio’s sunshine laws and public records
   

Open government quiz

OCOG’s Ohio Sunshine Law quiz contains questions based around real-life situations often encountered by journalists. Every reporter who has ever tried to get a public record or argue against an executive session knows two things about Ohio’s sunshine laws.

1. The statutes contain stirring language that meetings and records are presumed open to public access.
2. The laws seem to attract new exceptions and bad court rulings faster than a sofa collects cat hair.

So, with those two points in mind, attorney Jack Greiner, one of Ohio’s leading experts on access laws, created a quiz on Ohio Sunshine Laws that every journalist in Ohio should take.

To take the quiz, click here to download the quiz as a PowerPoint file. You can also download the quiz as an interactive PDF.