Working group thoughts Week Four

On Wednesday (4/27/11) after hearing from the public for about 30 minutes, the GRAMA working group broke out into four sub-committees. Chair Lane Beattie instructed those committees to meet for two weeks and then to bring back recommendations to the main working group May 11. (Beattie will not be there that day but will ask someone else to chair the meeting.)

I was on the Fees and Timeliness sub-committee composed of me, chair LaVarr Webb, John Dougall, Mark Johnson , Steve Handy, Liu Vakapuna and Janet Frank.

Jeff Salt sat in on the meeting and was included equally in the discussion. The committee set aside the questions prepared by Lane Beattie and first focused on public records.

At the outset,  LaVarr Webb said he wanted to look at how both GRAMA and HB477 addressed these issues.

John Dougall made the proposal that we recommend that all public records of any government entity in the state be posted to a central website similar to the state legal notices website. Those entities could also post those records to their own websites or put a link to the state site on their websites. All those records would be accessed free of charge.  Smaller entities could phase this in over time if they currently do not have the technology/funding to do so.

Additionally, if a record initially deemed private or protected by the governmental entity is, after being subject to the balancing test, found to be public, it should automatically be added to the public database at that point.

Mark Johnson was asked by Dougall to put together a list of records that would qualify and bring it to next week’s committee meeting.

All other records would be subject to reasonable fees. There was a long discussion on what constituted “reasonable fees.”  Both Steve Handy and Mark Johnson said that filling GRAMA requests can often be quite burdensome to local entities such as cities or counties and want to find a way to address that.

Committee members agreed that taxpayers already fund the maintenance of government records but most felt the costs associated with access should be borne by the requestors.

Most of the committee felt that since the majority of GRAMA requests come from law firms and businesses who use the information for commercial gain, that the taxpayers should not have to fund those requests. They also felt that with the exception of those that qualify for fee waivers, all requestors should pay the same fees.

Those fees, they said, should reflect the full costs of employees including benefits, as is common accounting practice in the business world.

I expressed the concern that those costs could be made to be prohibitive if an entity wanted to deny the requestor access to the record(s). A compromise suggestion that it be specified what those costs referred to and that a formula (used commonly in accounting practices) be applied  to determine the costs was accepted by the group.

Another issue that came up was regarding who processes the GRAMA request. Mark Johnson said that often the lowest paid employee that could process the request might not be available so the compromise was struck that we recommend that the statute be changed to read: “the lowest paid employee available.”

Timeliness

It was acknowledged that sometimes requests are not processed by the dates outlined in the statute but Johnson and others said that’s often because it takes longer and when the request is made, sometimes staff does not know how long  it will take to process the request. There was much discussion about the “extraordinary circumstances” outlined in the statute. Another issue was “voluminous “ requests since “voluminous” is not defined in the statute.

Jeff Salt shared his experience where sometimes requests are not processed (or are denied and sent through the appeals process) in enough time for the requestor to have the records he/she needs to comment in public hearings or appeal decisions of the governmental entity in the time outlined in other statutes. He was asked by LaVarr Webb to craft some language that could address those issues and bring it to the committee next week.

It was also expressed that many elected officials and the staff they oversee are so concerned about any possibility they might break the law re: GRAMA, that it is often routine to have attorneys review all GRAMA requests which adds to the cost and the time it takes to process a request. How to address those concerns was left for discussion this week.

Another issue that came up is who should qualify for a waiver. The current language in the statute is very subjective.

The statute says that the media is automatically considered as working for the public good. “Any person who requests a record to obtain information for a story or report for publication or broadcast to the general public is presumed to be acting to benefit the public rather than a person [63G-2-204 (iv) (4).

However, whether that definition is enough to address the debate over what constitutes ‘media” in 2011 was discussed. No conclusions were reached on that issue. It may come up this  week.

I will be in Florida this week and will not be able to attend the committee meeting. Jeff Salt is planning on attending and will fill me in on what happens.

I feel reasonably comfortable with the outcome of this first committee meeting. We had to compromise on fees but got them to suggest language to limit them and head off any abuse. At least there was some meaningful exchange.

I also touched base with a couple of people who were on other sub-committees or attended their meetings.

Simplification and Centralization

This committee decided to come up with two checklists, one for record keepers and another for requestors, to make the process more simple. I believe they’re going to refine the checklists next week.

Statutory Definitions

Jeff Hunt, who chaired the committee, said they came up with alternate definitions of such things as private and that they’ll present those to the working group for review. (Not sure what that meant.)

Emerging Technologies

This committee came up with a list of seven recommendations. (Thanks Kathy Van Dame) They felt their work is done and will not be meeting next week.

1. That a record be declared public or not public when it is finalized or filed. Also, that there be a directory by document name of records that are not public
2. That the state CIO (??) help governmental entities understand the requirements of GRAMA.
3. That records be released in their original structure.
4. That the state help municipalities with GRAMA requirements
5. That software to manage records be open source and available to all
6. Email may be subject to GRAMA
7. They decided not to address text messages. The technology is evolving and there are problems with retention.