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Alabama has never been known for its open and transparent government, but the response to a relatively mundane Open Records Act request that I submitted to the Alabama Real Estate Commission a month ago still managed to catch me by surprise.
The legal counsel for the Commission, Serena Cronier, an assistant attorney general by virtue of her position at a state agency, told me that to review the public records I requested, I would first have to submit one of several specific forms of ID proving that I am a resident of the state of Alabama.
What the what?
Now, I’m sure that Cronier was simply following along with guidelines put in place by the bigwigs at AREC, but I have to say that asking for someone from the ALABAMA Political Reporter – a publication that isn’t exactly new to the state – to first prove that he is, in fact, from Alabama was a new and spectacularly ridiculous hurdle put in place by bureaucrats who want only to stop taxpayers from seeing the reality of what their taxes are paying for.
To her credit, Cronier was very forthcoming in explaining the origin of the new impediment to public record access. It was tied to an opinion issued by the AG’s office following an opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013. That opinion...
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