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more on librarian faces discipline for obey state law
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2006 15:27:11 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Scott Alexander <salex () dsl cis upenn edu> Date: July 4, 2006 3:19:03 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] librarian faces discipline for obey state law Since moving to NJ, I've learned that the citizens here are fanatical about home rule as a basic governing principle. This results in things like having 500+ municipalities and 600+ school districts (some of which don't actually have schools, but just raise money to pay tuition to another school district). One of the results of this that I've seen is that there's never a notion that there is a need for any sort of regional view. Where one wouldn't have much success arguing that there should be no cell towers to a government responsible for a county sized area wouldn't be very successful, with small, autonomous towns, each of them is trying to figure out a way to have the cell towers offering local service just out of view in the neighboring townships. Generally, residents seem to believe that the township government should be able to fix their problems. Following the law is no excuse. I've seen people voted out of office for voting for a property re-assessment (required by state law). Cell tower plans often go to court despite fairly clear case law saying that the township has limited authority. If one wants to stay in office, it is safer to waste local tax dollars on a suit (and to later rail against the courts) than to try to lead by explaining that federal law preempts local law in this area and that you'd rather lower property taxes than tilt at windmills. Given that attitude, I'm not surprised in the least that township officials would argue that the local librarian should have acted based on the ends justifying the means rather than the law. And, if a librarian was sued for giving out records without a subpoena, they would look at that as an entirely different event and claim that she should have foreseen the result and used different means. Sigh, Scott Alexander On Tue, 2006-07-04 at 14:01 -0400, David Farber wrote:
Begin forwarded message: From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb () cs columbia edu> Date: July 3, 2006 9:17:24 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: librarian faces discipline for obey state law A librarian in New Jersey is facing disciplinary action for following state law. A 12-year-old girl was allegdly sexually threatened outside a library. The girl said that the man was carrying a particular book; when police asked who had checked out that book, the librarian told them to get a subpoena, as is *required* by NJ state law. Local officials are now accusing her of "blatant disregard" for law enforcement, partially because she consulted a state library association attorney rather than the town's attorney.One wonders if the town would be so quick to defend her if she were suedby the defendant for turning over records without a subpoena. Here are two different stories on the incident. http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2MDYmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTY5NTE1NjIme XJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkz http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkzJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2OTU1NjU2Jnlya XJ5N2Y3MTdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5Mg== --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as salex () aurora cis upenn edu To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ipArchives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting- people/
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