Access to Public Records

About this Study:

The purpose of this study is to answer the question "How well does the Open Records Law work in the cities and towns of Rhode Island?" by providing the first systematic data on the implementation of it. The authors visited all 39 cities and towns in the state and requested a variety of documents, all covered by the state's Open Records Act, from the city/town clerk, the school department, and the police department. In addition to measuring compliance in terms of receiving the documents, the ease of obtaining the records was examined, and in the case of the minutes from meetings, the quality of records was also examined.

How to use this website:

To retain the character of the report, this site makes extensive use of Adobe's Portable Document Format (.pdf files). It is highly recommended that you use Adobe's free Acrobat Reader to view the report. If you do not have the Acrobat reader installed on your computer, you may download it by clicking the button bellow. Acrobat is required to view the City and Town pages which provide detailed accounts of the visits to each locality.

However, for the convenience of those with slow connections or without the reader installed, the rest of the report is available on standard HTML web pages. On the table of contents bellow, select the [PDF] option if you have the reader installed, or select the [HTML] option for a standard webpage.

Contents:

Download the entire report as a single .PDF file (approx. 1 meg): [PDF]

This website was designed by Patrick MacRoy. Please e-mail any problems or questions. Special thanks to Taubman Center Research Administrator and Webmaster, Jack Combs, for the clickable map of RI and assistance throughout the project. The navigation buttons are from YeoYeo's Cool Site.