Manhattan Free Press 11-25-2021 Kansas Allows Private Companies to Hide Public Information

Kansas Allows Private Companies to Hide Public Information

By Celia Llopis-Jepson, Kansas News Service – In Oregon, a city is hiding from a newspaper how much of the region’s precious water Google uses(link is external) to cool its servers — claiming it’s a Google trade secret. A Utah county refused to show a disability rights center its jail manuals for things such as hygiene and medical care(link is external) — because the author had copyrighted them. Virginia pre-emptively promised Amazon(link is external) it would redact as much as it could get away with if any citizens asked for public records involving the company — to please the retail behemoth. And in Kansas, the state lets companies unhappy about public scrutiny simply black out documents themselves.