My colleague Sarah Lemagie’s tale of Hoppy the attack cat brought back bad memories for Thomas Buchberger. Buchberger told Lemagie that he still has scars from his September 16, 2007 encounter. It happened while he was walking his dog, a “docile” elderly Australian/German shepherd mix named Walden, a block from their home in Minneapolis’s Linden Hills neighborhood. He said it reminded him of a YouTube video where a tiger attacks an elephant to get at its rider. “It came out of nowhere like this tiger,” Buchberger said. “It would have killed my dog.” Instead, Buchberger told an animal control officer that Hoppy knocked him down and inflicted multiple scratches and punctures on his left quad and both calves.

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In search of missing tax dollars, Whistleblower paid a visit to the closed Bass Zone store on East Lake Street in Minneapolis in April. I didn’t find the $544,000 owed to the state in back sales taxes. Dan Olson at Minnesota Public Radio made his own pilgrimage to the former car audio shop sometime before Tuesday as part of his take on the state’s souped-up efforts to collect $489 million in unpaid taxes.

On Saturday, I participated on this panel with investigative reporter Tisha Thompson of WTTG TV, the Fox affiliate in Washington D.C. and Jaimi Dowdell, a database expert at Investigative Reporters and Editors in Missouri. It was moderated by Patrice McDermott of openthegovernment.org. Coverage of the entire conference (which also featured State Auditor Rebecca Otto and Legislative Auditor Jim Nobles) is available at The Uptake’s video archive.

The two-day 2009 Freedom of Information Summit kicks off today at the Marriott City Center. The conference is being staged by two groups that advocate for transparency in government, the National Freedom of Information Coalition and the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information. Yours truly will be speaking on Saturday about the Star Tribune’s use of public records in our coverage of the 35W bridge collapse in 2007, as part of a panel titled “FOI and Infrastructure.” For a soundbite-sized chunk, listen to the podcast previewing my remarks.

You can also listen to podcasts from the conference, including my panel’s moderator Patrice McDermott of openthegovernment.org, Legislative Auditor James Nobles, Minnesota public records expert Don Gemberling and other participants.

It’s heartening to see we’re not the only ones talking about transparency right now. Federal agencies now appear to be falling all over each other to express a new commitment to openness. Those that have announced changes in recent days include the Food and Drug Administration, which says it wants the public to have more insight into the way it makes decisions, and the agency that investigated the 35W bridge collapse, the National Transportation Safety Board, which says it will expand access to accident investigations.