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A Minnesota court is poised to decide how much information the public can demand from construction companies that take on eight-figure government contracts but decline to abide by the same disclosure requirements that apply to government agencies.The Timberjay, a weekly newspaper in northern Minnesota, is fighting to prove that a construction management firm and its subcontractors must honor requests under Minnesota's Government Data Practices Act for details about schools they are building at the public's expense.Typically, private companies are not within the reach of state open-records laws, which entitle the public to review and copy documents that are in the custody of state, county or city agencies.But lawyers for The Timberjay say this situation isn't typical. By assuming management of a $78 million package of school district construction projects, a private vendor, Johnson Controls Inc., also assumed the disclosure responsibilities that go along with that authority, they argue.Attorneys for the company argue that, in addition to expanding the law beyond its literal terms, a ruling in favor of the newspaper would discourage firms from seeking government work for fear of giving away sensitive internal information to competitors.The ruling will apply only in Minnesota, but it will be watched throughout the country, with governments increasingly "privatizing" what used to be public services performed by public employees.Variations of the issue are recurring across the country. The South Carolina Supreme Court will decide whether a state association of school administrators is so entangled with government -- through taxpayer funding, through the receipt of fringe benefits normally reserved for public employees and through exercise of legislatively assigned duties -- that it should be forced to obey South Carolina's open-records act.In Minnesota, the state Court of Appeals heard arguments last week in the Timberjay case, testing whether a private company can be brought within the coverage of the Data Practices Act when it performs a governmental function.And that question -- how "governmental" is the job of constructing school buildings -- may be decisive.Often, the information that journalists need about private contractors' performance is available through the government agencies involved in the contract.

In a setback for public access, a South Carolina judge has refused to allow journalists to review a medical examiner's autopsy report in connection with the death of a 25-year-old man shot by police.In a July 9 order, a Sumter County trial judge decided that autopsy records fall within the exemption in South Carolina's Freedom of Information Act covering "medical" records.Although autopsy reports traditionally are public record, privacy advocates are gaining traction across the country in seeking confidentiality, in part because of concerns that gruesome photos upsetting to the survivors may be widely distributed online.Reporter Joe Perry and his Sumter, S.C., newspaper, The Item, sued the Sumter County coroner in May 2011 seeking access to the autopsy records for Aaron Lee Jacobs, who was shot to death after officers investigating a carjacking said he drew a gun.Although the ruling went against disclosure, the outcome could have been far worse for journalists.The coroner's primary argument was that the records were confidential under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act ("HIPAA"), which often is used frivolously by government agencies to withhold records that, as in this case, have nothing to do with a doctor's delivery of medical treatment.