Posted Thursday, March 11, 2021 10:42 am Last week, in this space, we argued that the state’s Legislature should end the exemption for townships in the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act (MGDPA), citing Greenwood Township’s increasing unwillingness to comply with public records requests. In follow-up, we want to be sure we did not leave the wrong impression. Township residents do have rights to access local government records, but enforcing those rights is far more difficult and expensive for rural township residents than for Minnesotans who reside in local units of government subject to the MGDPA. As many of our readers are probably aware, there are different types of law. For our purposes, there is statutory law, which is enacted by the Legislature, and there is common law, which is the body of law developed and refined over the centuries by the courts as a result of countless decisions.