See what you might have missed from this year’s NICAR conference.

For 17 years, state employee Charles Burroughs ran a golf tournament held in conjunction with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s annual environmental conference. He used his state email account to solicit sponsorships for the event from companies regulated by his employer, set up a (now suspended) website for golfers to register for the tournament, and paid expenses from a bank account established solely for this event. However, the TDEC refused a public records request for emails regarding the tournament, maintaining the event was a private affair.

Wyoming’s new records fee policies were recently put to the test when the state’s Department of Environmental Quality were found to have charged over $400 for a request that fell well under the state’s new threshold for charging of electronic records.

Three Massachusetts school districts are deploying electric school buses for the 2018-2019 school year after a pilot period from fall 2016 through early 2018 showed environmental benefits but mixed results in energy efficiency and savings.

According to records obtained by the Washington Post, the Bureau of Land Management is recommending new legislation that would limit the number of FOIA requests individuals and agencies could file with the agency, create stricter criteria for fee waivers, and increase fees for “search and redaction.”

Never before has it been so easy to engage others in your open government cause. Thinking of starting your own public records campaign? Already submitted a request, only to be thwarted by fees? We chatted with three MuckRock users who have had crowdfunding success to hear their tips for getting over crowdfunding anxieties, getting the word out, and, ultimately, getting records.

These days the Hanford Nuclear Reservation has the dubious distinction of being the “most contaminated place in America,” with about 53 million gallons of toxic waste stored at the sprawling 586 square mile facility. While the recent tunnel collapse is the most severe incident yet at the site, inspection reports released by the Environmental Protection Agency through FOIA reveal a history of slow-burning decrepitude at the nuclear waste dump.