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Government Operations and Liability Committee
It has been a busy year for the Government Operations and Liability Committee. The Fall Council Meeting in Madison was a great success, with Government Operations sponsoring a program on Fourth Amendment search and seizure issues that was very well received. At this year’s Spring Council Meeting in San Juan, Committee Chair Dan Dalton spoke about his recent case experiences with the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) on a program sponsored by the Land Use Committee. Government Operations is now looking to develop topic ideas for a program at the Section’s Spring Meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, where we hope to present a program as well as have a hot topics roundtable.
Last year was also a productive one for the publishing of books that fall within the Government Operations area. Justina Cintrón Perino’s Citizen Oversight of Law Enforcement came out last May and is one of the few books addressing this important subject area. A new edition of Sword & Shield, edited by May Massaron Ross and Edwin P. Voss, Jr., published in August, and later this year Martha Harrell Chumbler’s Access to Government in the Computer Age: An Examination of State Public Records Laws will publish. All of these books are musts for any attorney practicing in state and local government law, and the Committee thanks these authors for their efforts.
The success of this Committee and this Section depends on the efforts of our members. The Committee is always looking for volunteers to become active within the Committee and its subcommittees, to speak on topics of interest, to write books, or to write articles for the other Section publications. Please contact Chair Dan Dalton (ddalton@tomkiwdalton.com) if you are interested in becoming more than a passive member. With your help, we can make the new bar year a great one for Government Operations.