SB 70, introduced by Sen. Landske, would make some changes to the public meetings and public records laws. Among other things, it would impose a civil penalty of $100 for the first violation and $500 for subsequent violations on a public official, personally, who violated various aspects of the public meeting laws.
If a public records complaint to a court alleges improper redaction, it requires the court to review the unredacted records in camera. (Meaning by the judge, in chambers, outside of the presence of the other party.) Judges will love this – they enjoy dealing with discovery issues. The bill would also allow the judge to impose a fine on a public official who: improperly discloses information in public records that is required to be withheld; or improperly withholds information in public records that is required to be disclosed.
The problem with this approach is that the General Assembly is not nearly specific enough with the language of the public records laws to reasonably impose a fine on a public official who fails to properly thread the needle the General Assembly has created for public records. Withhold this, don’t withhold that, make a mistake, get fined. Maybe they could create a safe harbor where they just require the General Assembly to come look at the records itself and disclose whatever it thinks appropriate and pay the fine if it can’t properly implement its own laws.
There is another provision that provides for inspection of records by the public access counselor that requires the public agency to deliver unredacted copies and prepare an index of claimed privilege. I’m sure the public access counselor is excited about the prospect of dealing with enormous document dumps. And, I doubt public agencies will receive any money to fund the costs of complying with this law. It’s dead easy to craft a public records request that requires thousands of dollars worth of time to respond to. This law will increase that asymmetry.
One of the best reforms they can make is to give a definite time to respond to requests. That’s the biggest problem. There needs to be some sort of exception for large document requests, but having a set time for responding to an ORR would be useful.
The problem with that Paul is that you also need to specify the “type” of response. I did an FOIA to my local sheriffs office and their response was that “They would look into my request.” They claimed that their “response” met the requirements of the FIOA even though it included none of the information that I had requested. Hmph! Go figure.
Tom, actually, that response exactly meets the requirements. An agency must respond to your request within 24 hours of a hand-delivered request or 3-5 business days if it’s a request by mail. All it has to say “We received your request, and we’re looking into it” or denying your request and citing the public records exception.
What Paul is talking about is an additional time line AFTER the initial response.
We actually have pretty good open records laws here, but they’re backed by absolutely no teeth whatsoever.
Yes Matt, I understand that their response was perfectly within the law. My point is that additional timelines won’t prevent them from sending the exact same response over and over again. “We’re still looking into your request” will become the “time-tested” byline of every agency that doesn’t want to deal with you. If you add a requirement that specifies that after the first go-around they agency MUST respond with either the requested information or a simple denial, then you can legally move the process forward. Simply adding more timelines just keeps punting the ball down the field until the information request is forgotten or useless.