Transparency News 4/20/17

Thursday, April 20, 2017


National Stories
 

A judge on Long Island has ordered the Daily News to remove the name of a defendant in a civil lawsuit from our website. Supreme Court Justice John Galasso, who wants us to scrub the man’s name from an October 2016 story, must have missed the day the Constitution was taught in law school. The defendant’s name is Eric Lerner. Eric Lerner. Eric Lerner. Eric Lerner. Eric Lerner. Eric Lerner. Eric Lerner. Eric Lerner. Furthermore, Eric Lerner. In a countersuit filed in March, Lerner claims the suit against him, brought by former employee Jessica Pelletier, is a defamatory pack of lies. We don’t know who’s telling the truth. We would happily tell Lerner’s side of the story — but in another insane decision, Galasso’s order seems to seal the entire file in Lerner’s suit, leaving it unclear what we can report about it.
New York Daily News

The public could soon get a look at confidential reports about errors, mishaps and mix-ups in the nation’s hospitals that put patients’ health and safety at risk, under a groundbreaking proposal from federal health officials. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services wants to require that private health care accreditors publicly detail problems they find during inspections of hospitals and other medical facilities, as well as the steps being taken to fix them. Nearly nine in 10 hospitals are directly overseen by those accreditors, not the government.
ProPublica

Judicial Watch said Wednesday it is suing the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to get records showing nearly $5 million in American taxpayer money went to the Macedonian branch of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. The conservative watchdog group filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the State Department and USAID after both failed to respond to a Feb. 16 FOIA request seeking records related to grants or payment authorizations, records of communication between State Dept. or USAID officials and the Open Society Foundations. 
Fox News

A local activist filed yet another lawsuit against the administration of the City of Detroit's demolition program — this time challenging a proposed $47,000 bill and a wait of more than two years to access public records already handed over to federal investigators. If Robert Davis is successful, more than 250,000 pages worth of e-mails, phone records and other documents related to the ongoing criminal investigation of the city's demolition program could be made public.
Detroit Free Press

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