Government Spending

• Any level of government--local, county, state and federal--must disclose financial documents to the public. Taxpayers can monitor spending and decide whether certain purchases, contracts and employee wages serve the public interest. Available documents include annual budgets, vouchers, records of payment, salary and benefit totals for public employees and contracts for services of equipment use. Likewise, the financial statements governments provide to independent auditors and the state comptroller annually are also subject to public viewing. If the comptroller finds problems with a local government's record keeping, those findings are often published online in the interest of making town and city hall more transparent.
  
  

Government Activities

• The minutes from the governing board are public record. So are correspondences from elected officials to constituents or outside entities. Internal memos between employees or departments within a city, town or county, however, are exempt from Freedom of Information laws, according to FOIA Advocates. The documented activities of a department, such as a highway department's weekly log for snow plowing, are available.
  
  

Public Safety and Codes

• Police, code enforcement and fire departments record all of their activities in daily log books and incident/fire/citation reports. Records might contain names and addresses of suspects or witnesses, a recollection of the incident and a description of the evidence. Fire and code enforcement reports often include photos. Some records pertaining to ongoing criminal investigations are exempt from Freedom of Information laws, according to FOIA Advocates. The police blotter is a popular read in newspapers because people want to know about crime in their neighborhoods.
  
  

Courts

• Many types of criminal and civil court records are accessible under the Freedom of Information Act. It is in the public interest, for example, to find out if a convicted burglar had a reduced sentence by agreeing to several years of probation. Sex offender hearings take place in open court, and judge's decisions on those matters are available to anyone. Federal Bankruptcy Court records are also public, but entire Social Security numbers cannot be disclosed on bankruptcy court records that are available electronically, according to the U.S. Courts Office.
  
  

Nonprofits

• Federal law requires most types of nonprofit agencies, excluding churches, to maintain their annual tax returns as public records. This includes hospitals, day care centers, foundations, museums, arts organizations and charities. These reports list revenues, expenses, major purchases, debts and salaries of the agency's highest-paid employees. Newspapers often report on hospitals that ran in the red while paying executives six- or seven-figure salaries.