Complainants alleged numerous OMA violations relating to a January 10, 2017 Town Council meeting. With respect to the alleged defect in the notice for the meeting, we found that several Complainants attended the meeting in question and that no Complainant sufficiently articulated how they were...

The Complainant alleged the Westerly School Committee ("School Committee") violated the OMA when the Chairman of the School Committee read a statement during the Public Comment section of one of its meeting, yet there was no item on the agenda indicating the statement would be read. Consistent...

In Moses Afonso Ryan, Ltd v. City of East Providence, we reviewed the Complainant's Access to Public Records Act ("APRA") complaint against the City of East Providence ("City") and concluded that the City violated the APRA when it improperly denied the Complainant's APRA request. See R.I. Gen....

The Complainant alleged the Town of Cumberland ("Town") violated the APRA when it improperly redacted and denied his APRA request seeking records concerning the death of a third party. In In re: Cumberland Police Department, ADV PR 03-02, this Department concluded that "when a law enforcement...

There was no evidence that the DOC unreasonably conducted its search and retrieval, which consisted of two hours, the first hour being free. Because the Complainant did not tender pre-payment, as a matter of law, the DOC could not have denied access. R.I. Gen. Laws 38-2-7(b). The DOC did deny...

Complainant alleged that the CCRI violated the APRA when it failed to produce documents responsive to his request. We have previously stated that the APRA governs the public's right to access public documents, but does not mandate or require that public bodies answer questions. See Gagnon v. City...

It was undisputed that we had previously investigated, addressed, and resolved Complainant's prior allegations regarding his January 15, 2016 APRA request in Greenbaum v. Providence Police Department, PR 17-24. Complainant now sought to raise a new allegation of violation regarding the same APRA...

The Town of Foster ("Town") did not violate the OMA because, based upon the evidence presented, there was no evidence that a quorum of the Town Council members met outside the purview of a properly noticed meeting and discussed matters over which the Town Council had supervision, control,...

Because the Town Council re-adopted the resolution that it had passed on April 5, 2017, injunctive relief was not an appropriate remedy. Moreover, our review found no evidence of a willful or knowing violation, and indeed, the Complainant did not allege a willful or knowing violation. For these...

The Complainant filed two (2) APRA requests with the City on the same date. With respect to the City's response to one of the APRA requests, the evidence revealed that the City timely responded indicating that it did not maintain the document responsive to that request. We failed to find any...