The Center for Public Integrity published an article recently about public information requests in the state of Texas. You can read it here.
According to the article, in 2011 the city of El Paso government attempted to deny public information requests by appealing to the attorney general of Texas 63% of the time.
63%
That is horrible. The city sought permission to deny 63% of the requests made. Some of the appeals were appropriate, but we know first-hand how the city uses the process to hold up disclosure. The article did not provide numbers about how many times the attorney general agreed with El Paso.
My suspicion is that the city lost the majority of those cases. Texas makes most government documents available to the public. The exceptions relate primarily to personal privacy, not government inconvenience.
The city uses the tactic of appealing to the attorney general regularly. It knows that it will lose, but it is an effective way to stall — generally for about 90 days.
74%
That is the number that I hope that city staff and city council keep in their collective minds as time advances.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
You have to give the EL PASO TIMES credit because I believe they have led the charge in continually requesting that certain records be made public. In more than one instance, they also spent money on legal fees to make their case. So, while many folks might not always agree with the TIMES, they appear to agree with us on the importance of transparency in government.
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The El Paso times agrees with public disclosure laws when it fits its agenda (or that of its masters). Never once id they attempt to invesigate or honestly cover the ballpark fiasco deal. Other than one editorial after that disastrous attempt to establish a public disclosure policy that went completely against the law, the EPT was complicitly silent. Their only take was editorial after editorial endorsing it and biased “news” stories.
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