Should our friend have to pay this open records bill?

Last week, a reader of this blog–who wishes to have his name withheld pending an outcome–wrote and asked a question.

Here’s the situation:

“Person A filed an open records request with a state agency in his state. The state agency responded that they would fulfill the request but that it would cost about $650. The great majority of this fee was the fee to review and redact the requested documents. Shortly thereafter, Person A learned that Person B had requested the exact same documents about a week before he did. Person B was given the same fee–about $650 for review and redaction. Person B had in fact already paid the fee, and the review and redaction of the requested documents had occurred by the time that Person A requested them.”

I asked some other FOIAers about this yesterday in an email and the unanimous response was that this is clearly a case of double-billing.

Two bloggers, Chris Joyner at the Jackson Clarion-Ledger and Dani at Pass Open Records have posed the question to their readers.

On a practical level, what would you do if this happened to you?

Treatment like this is what causes some people to conclude that their open records requests are not being handled in good faith.

That does not encourage a warm and friendly feeling toward the agency they are dealing with.

This week’s Carnival of Open Records is up

Lennie at Education Matters has posted this week’s edition of the Carnival of Open Records.

And what a good edition it is, chock-full of all the news from the wonderful world of the FOIAsphere.

Head over, read the posts, and think about hosting an edition of the Carnival. A number of this blog’s readers first happened across us when we hosted editions–so why don’t you let that good thing happen to you, as well, by hosting an edition?

John Paff: Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week

John Paff of New Jersey is this week’s winner of the coveted Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week award.

John is so sunshine-troublicious that he could probably win the STOTW Award once a month.

I’m not sure how long ago John started his sunshine-troublemaking, but I did notice that in 1996, a federal judge ordered over $20,000 worth of restitution to John because–in a flagrant violation of the First Amendment–he was arrested at a post office for passing out political flyers.

To win the STOTW Award, we need a nominee who has been criticized for his or her open government work. As chair of the Open Government Advocacy Council of the New Jersey Libertarian Party, Paff has been so active, so successfully, for so long that it is hard these days to find anyone to attack him.

They just capitulate, although he still has to file lawsuits.

In the last month alone, John has:

•  persuaded the town of Sea Girt to disclose more clearly and usefully the subjects they discuss behind closed doors,
•  persuaded Somerset County to stop charging illegally high fees for copies of documents,
• launched an effort to persuade Monmouth County to disclose a settlement agreement in a sexual discrimination lawsuit,
• filed a complaint against the Long Hill school board to obtain copies of documents pertaining to possibly inappropriate online comments made by a member of the school board, and
• initiated a campaign to change New Jersey’s open records law so that attorneys for public agencies have an incentive to ensure that the agencies comply with open records requests in good faith.

Open records and non-profits in Iowa

The Des Moines Register continues to play a significant role in open records in Iowa, this week revealing that the alumni associations for two of the state’s public universities have exclusive contracts with credit card companies to promote those credit cards to students.

The alumni associations contend that as private organizations, they are not subject to Iowa’s open records law.

They haven’t been reading the tea leaves.

The Des Moines Register has some information about the contracts because the public universities to which these supposedly private organizations are attached don’t deny that they are subject to Iowa FOIA, but it doesn’t have all the information it seeks.

It is ironic that these alumni associations have entered into information-sharing contracts with private credit cards companies–under the terms of which they share with those credit card companies a very significant amount of otherwise private information about students–but are unwilling to share with Iowa newspapers the nature of those contracts.

She understood that the salaries were public information, except, in her opinion, they were to be kept private.

Scott Beveridge writes a Pennsylvania-based blog, Travel with a Beveridge, and recently shared a story or two about tough times getting public records.

WikiFOIA thanks

Thanks to Mark Schaver–he writes the Depth Reporting blog for the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky–for his post about WikiFOIA.

In the true spirit of wiki, Mark says:

If you find any of the information inadequate, it’s your fault, because you can contribute, and you’re encouraged to adopt your state.

Here’s a thought: Store records so they’re easy to find

The village of Campton Hills, Illinois is legally absorbing the Wasco Sanitary District.

The sanitary district has operated for ten years. It has the authority to levy property taxes, and does.

Campton Hills village president Patsy Smith asked for the normal documents you’d want if you were taking on such an obligation:

Copies of state and county permits to operate a wastewater facility

A list of the district’s employees and consultants.

 Financial records, meeting agendas and minutes for five years.

This week in open records

Lennie at Education Matters is hosting this week’s edition of the Carnival of Open Records. That’ll go up on Thursday.

Speaking of the Carnival of Open Records, we were pleased to see that the determined and impactful national group, Open The Government includes the Carnival in its list of resources, describing it as “a blog-centered project to build and promote awareness about open records issues and concerns.”

There are so many interesting stories about open records, FOIA and freedom of information that it’s impossible for one (or even eight) blogs to stay on top of it all. Having a Carnival pulls together the “must” reads so people have a chance to stay on top of things.

If you’re a FOIA blogger, please consider signing up to host a future edition.

Cloudy in California

The “hot button issue” this week on WikiFOIA is “When government employees use private email addresses on government computers, are those emails FOIAable?”

We’re still looking for the answer to that question, but a California judge has just ruled that under California’s public records access act Suzanne Tucker, a government employee using her own computer and a private email address, doesn’t have to provide emails she wrote about city business.

Not surprisingly, attorneys for the Tracy Press have filed an appeal, asserting that the judge’s decision “emasculates” California’s laws governing open records.

Meanwhile, in a case we first covered here, another California judge has ruled that the city of Vista is required to:

….keep secret a list of employers registered under an ordinance regulating day laborers.

That phrasing is from the San Diego Union-Tribune. The ACLU, which argued in favor of not releasing the records, says:

“There must be certain islands of privacy on the seas of disclosures.”

Sunshine Activist Chetly Zarko

This week’s Sunshine Activist interview is with Chetly Zarko, who lives in the Clawson/Troy area of Michigan.

Zarko takes jobs consulting with political campaigns, so in that sense he does not qualify as the amateurs or regular citizens we are featuring in this year-long series. On the other hand, Zarko has been filing FOIAs in Michigan for 15 years, the great majority of which were unrelated to a political campaign. He has repeatedly won lawsuits and his work has been featured or discussed in a number of newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal.

Zarko blogs at Power, Politics, & Money and now also at a new blog covering Oakland County, Oakland Politics. He welcomes questions and feedback from novice and seasoned FOIAers alike, and can be reached here.

This interview is long, and rich with very useful information and insights that will help FOIAers of all political persuasions. Thank you, Chet.