Submit nominations for Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week

To read about the most recent Sunshine Troublemakers, visit STOTW on Sunshine Review.

37th recipient, Week of December 15, 2008

Susan Siegel

36th recipient, Week of November 3, 2008

Joel Chandler

35th recipient, Week of October 24, 2008

James Vittorioso

34th recipient, Week of October 15, 2008

Curtis Hier

33rd Recipient, Week of October 6, 2008

Bill Hugenberg

32nd Recipient, Week of September 26, 2008

Meet Christine Barry of Shiawassee County, Michigan. Christine is this week’s Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week and she has had to endure and conquer much in order to earn this coveted award.

Christine fought the law, and Christine won.

31st Recipient, Week of September 18, 2008

Meet Bill Phillips of Pulaski County, Arkansas, who is posting "tens of thousands" of public records on his personal blog. Read all about it here.

30th Recipient, Week of September 11, 2008

Dan Kramer of Sussex County, Delaware has been attending county council meetings for over ten years, making sure the council complies with the Delaware Freedom of Information Act. Dan Kramer, STOTW.

29th Recipient, Week of September 5, 2008

Pat Kogutkiewicz asked lots of questions at a school board meeting in Osh Kosh, Wisconsin. For shame!

28th Recipient, Week of August 7, 2008

Brian Keesee, of Oak Island, North Carolina is this week’s Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week.

Keesee is a building contractor. In September 2007, he asked the town for records of city staff members about a construction project. Read what happened next here.

27th Recipient, Week of July 10, 2008

Here at SSOR, we are breaking our rule that the coveted and increasingly prestigious Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week is for ordinary citizens, as opposed to the hardworking members of the fourth estate. We figure that ordinary citizens have an even harder time getting public documents than members of the regular press.

In this case, the Carolina Forest Chronicle is being treated with the same degree of non-respect as an ordinary citizen, and we therefore feel compelled to acknowledge them and welcome them to the storied ranks of the STOTWs.

26th Recipient, Week of June 5, 2008

Cindy Wilson, of Anderson County, South Carolina is this week’s Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week. Wilson is a county councilwoman, which means that–not being an ordinary citizen in the strictly technical sense–she wouldn’t qualify for this prestigious award.

However, Wilson took an important sunshine issue all the way to the South Carolina Supreme Court, where, unfortunately, earlier this week she lost. Read the details here.

25th Recipient, Week of May 22, 2008

Robert Mullins of Augusta, Georgia is our 25th Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week. Mullins is the head of the Association for Fair Government; he is currently awaiting a judge’s ruling on an open records lawsuit he filed against the city of Augusta.

24th Recipient, Week of May 15, 2008

Meet Kathy Barnes, our 24th Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week. Kathy lives in Albertville, Alabama. She is the 1st Alabama resident to win the coveted and increasingly prestigious STOTW award.

23rd Recipient, Week of May 1, 2008

Meet Stephen Whitaker, our 23rd Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week. Mr. Whitaker lives in Greenwich, Connecticut. He is the 2nd Connecticut resident to win this coveted and increasingly prestigious award, joining Andy Thibault. They know how to crank out the rabble rousers in CT!

22th Recipient, Week of April 22, 2008

We’d like to introduce you to David Koenig, our 22nd Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week. Mr. Koenig lives in Federal Way, Washington. All of our STOTWs are wonderful, and Mr. Koenig is a deserving peer. Over the course of several public record lawsuits, Mr. Koenig has won thousands of dollars.

21th Recipient, Week of April 16, 2008

The first ever celebrity STOTW award goes to actor Wesley Snipes. He has been accused of filing 'frivolous' FOIA requests regarding the federal prosecution he is faced with for possible tax evasion. (Is it just me, or does someone famous usually get in trouble over taxes right around this time of year?)

20th Recipient, Week of April 10, 2008

Margaret Pass of Coral Gables, Florida is this week's STOTW. She earns this prestigious award by her work requesting records from the Building and Zoning Department. More about her four-page request and some of the push back that it's gotten available here.

19th Recipient, Week of April 3, 2008

John Meyer of Ohio earned this week's STOTW award for requesting e-mails sent and received by the local school district. Community members and parents are shocked and angry to discover that the messages that they have been sending the school district are subject to open records law.

18th Recipient, Week of March 20, 2008

Iowa resident Allen Diercks is the lucky recipient of this week's STOTW award. Diercks has sued Riverdale (population 656) twice since 2005 over open government issues, at a personal cost of nearly $250,000. He's finally gotten the records he requested.

17th Recipient, Week of March 10, 2008

Alderman David Schmidt is the 17th winner of the STOTW award. Alderman Schmidt released information to the local press from closed city council meetings that he believed should be open. His peers on the city council, in secret, passed around a resolution of condemnation, which Schmidt immediately denounced as illegal, stating that he will continue his troublesome ways.

16th Recipient, Week of February 18, 2008

Bob Bryant of Crenshaw, Mississippi is the 16th recipient of the STOTW Award. Mr. Bryant, who is using open records to try to understand the city's negligence of a delapidated area of his town, is said to be "a real thorn" in the side of the city's powers-that-be.

15th Recipient, Week of February 1, 2008

Our first Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week award in 2008–and the 15th STOTW overall–goes to Sal Sciarrino of Marco Island, Florida.

A complaint by Mr. Sciarrino has led to the Florida Attorney General’s office pursuing a non-criminal charge against Marco Island city council member Chuck Kiester for violating Florida’s sunshine laws.

14th Recipient, Week of December 21, 2007

Our 14th Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week award goes to Leigh Purdum of Madison County, Virginia. Ms. Purdum has been accused of being a "former disgruntled employee" by the county Sheriff, who was ordered by a judge to not only comply with her FOIA request, but to pay a fine of $250 for trying to obstruct it.

UPDATE: Leigh Purdum has received another honor for her struggles with the Madison County sheriff: VCOG honors citizen, journalist. More here and here.

13th Recipient, Week of December 10, 2007

This week's STOTW is Kendall Hallett. Mr. Hallett lost his job as a parking enforcer for the Madison (Wisconsin) Police Department because he posted public documents on his private website.

12th Recipient, Week of November 15, 2007

This week’s STOTW is Harry Adams. He was just fired from his job as a volunteer fireman. He was apparently fired in retaliation for filing an Arkansas open records request.

Adams is (or was) a volunteer fireman. He is also a board member of the Oakland-Promise Land Volunteer Fire Department. His requests for more detailed financial information were not met with success, so he filed an Arkansas FOIA asking for a copy of the department’s income and expenses.

11th Recipient, Week of November 8, 2007

Wisconsin resident John Washburn is the very deserving recipient of this week’s Sunshine Troublemaker award. John won this award for requesting all the e-mails that Texas governor would normally delete every week. His adventures are recounted by Texas' Political Junkie.

10th Recipient, Week of October 29, 2007

Washington resident Douglas Moore, a horse-racing steward, only works nine months out of the year. The three months he is unemployed he receives no health benefits through his government job with the Horse Racing Commission. He wanted to know if other state agencies treated their part-time employees the same way. After various twists and turns, the Department of Corrections in Washington has agreed to pay Moore $65,000 because they wouldn't give him the records he wanted in electronic format. We say Don't mess with horse people.

9th Recipient, Week of October 15, 2007

Virginia resident Milari Madison wanted to know who Loudoun County Supervisor Jim Burton was in contact with via e-mail, so she filed a FOIA asking for his e-mail list. He denied the request, and retaliated by sending out an email to that large e-mail list with Madison's name and contact information. One of his e-mail correspondents responded that Madison should be ignored--that she had filed the request because she wasn't "getting enough" at home. What Loudoun County doesn't have enough of is common human decency and sunshine. Milari, we salute you.

8th Recipient, Week of September 24, 2007

New Jersey resident John Paff has a long and illustrious career in open government advocacy. In September 2007, he has persuaded towns and school districts in New Jersey to more accurately describe the subjects of closed-door meetings and to honor the state's laws against overcharging for public documents--even though a county clerk complains that it costs more for the county to make copies than it does for the copy shop down the street becaues the county has to invest in expensive copying equipment. Hm.

7th Recipient, Week of September 17, 2007

Colorado resident Tod Tibbetts who filed an open records request to see how many fence permits had been issued in Silt. Quite a few, except the fence-building Mayor didn't have one and says none have ever been issued. The same mayor says Tibbetts is on a witch hunt. If so, he has good aim.

6th Recipient, Week of August 27, 2007

Florida resident Hugh Taylor, who has incurred the wrath of a county commissioner by asking for copies of the commissioner's emails. The nerve!

Update: The Tallahassee Democrat notes that Mr. Taylor has received the STOTW award.

5th Recipient, Week of August 20, 2007

North Dakota blogger Chad Nodland of the North Decoder blog, for creative use of FOIA in an ongoing criminal prosecution related to the state's Workforce Safety & Insurance or WSI, agency. The WSI believes that Mr. Nodland's request was excessively "voluminous".

4th Recipient, Week of August 13, 2007

Ben Hansen, also known as Dr. Bonkers, who is being fined $3,500 by the State of Michigan for asking some perfectly reasonable questions.

3rd Recipient, Week of August 6, 2007

Andy Thibault, who writes the Cool Justice Report is the winner of this week's STOTW Award for his expert use of open records to establish that the Lewis Mills High School administration in Burlington, Connecticut has been behaving very badly. Very, very badly.

2nd Recipient, Week of July 23, 2007

Texas school parent Dianna Pharr, who is working to promote transparency in her local public school district. Her school district released her son's private educational and medical records to the public, said it was "inadvertent", and then hired attorneys three times to defeat her attempts to change how the school handles such records. The only time the school won is when the hearing was in front of them.

Dianna is a strong candidate for "Sunshine Troublemaker of the Year".

1st Recipient, Week of July 16, 2007

California horse owner Jerry Jamgotchian, who wanted horse health records from the California Horse Racing Board. According to that government agency's Medical Director, Rick Arthur, Jamgotchian’s efforts to obtain these records is a "harassment request."