| New rules could hinder public access |
By: By Sabrina Bates, Chief Staff Writer
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Posted: Thursday, January 22, 2009 10:12 am
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| Getting public records could potentially get a little bit tougher for Weakley County citizens.
Local elected officials will have an opportunity to create roadblocks for obtaining public records if a resolution is passed during a county commission meeting Monday evening.
While the one page resolution seems cut and dry with its language, the seven pages attached to Resolution 2009-25 add to the provisions of a county law that was designed to generate additional revenue from county taxpayers.
County commissioners will have the option to adopt a resolution that provides a “schedule of reasonable charges for copies of public records in Weakley County.” Under the resolution, custodians or departments that house certain public records, will be allowed to charge a fee of 15 cents per one page black and white copy for a public record.
Also included in the considered resolution are calculated labor charges for retrieval by the county employee providing the copy of the public record. Labor charges could run up to $20 each hour after the first hour for people seeking open records.
“Custodians cannot charge a labor fee until it takes a person longer than one hour to get the public record,” Frank Gibson, director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, commented on Tuesday.
Gibson emphasized that counties were not mandated by the state or the coalition to adopt such a resolution pertaining to public records. He added many local governments saw an avenue to create additional revenue for the county by charging paper printing costs.
An additional attachment to the pending resolution is a two-page “Inspection/Duplication of Records Request” form that must be filled out in order to obtain a copy of a public record.
Gibson assured The Press that the form must be filled out in order to obtain a copy of the requested record, not to inspect the public document.
He noted that a reasonable amount of time to obtain a public record recommended by the state’s open government coalition was four days, but by law the public document must be provided within seven business days unless a request for a public record is denied.
Under the umbrella of the county’s resolution, a Records Request Denial Letter is included which must be provided to a person who has been denied a copy of a requested public document.
While TCA Code 10-7-505(d) provides that the Tennessee Public Records Act shall be “broadly construed so as to give the fullest possible access to public records, courts across the state have acknowledged the ability of records custodians to adopt reasonable rules governing the manner in which records requests are to be made and fulfilled.
The state Open Records Coalition offers “Best Practices Guidelines” that are not included in the county’s considered resolution.
Included in the Best Practices Guidelines are the following:
• When labor charges are going to be assessed, qualified staff persons with the lowest hourly wage should be utilized to produce the requested records.
• To the extent possible, when records are maintained electronically, records custodians should produce large-volume records request electronically. Records should be produced electronically whenever feasible as a means of utilizing the most “cost-efficient method of producing” records.
• If a governmental entity maintains a Web site, custodians should post as many records, and particularly records such as agendas and minutes from meetings, on the Web site whenever it is possible to do so.
• Whenever possible, a records custodian should have a designated supervised space available during normal business hours where requestors can inspect public records.
As a former records custodian, Weakley County Mayor Houston Patrick explained that records retrieval could be “time-consuming” for an employee charged with retrieving a public record.
He added that revenue could be lost by time consumption for time spent copying public records.
Weakley County Attorney Jeff Washburn claimed there was one thing he liked about the resolution.
“One thing I like about this bill is the charge of 15 cents per copy. Our prices ranged anywhere from free to one dollar a sheet. This sets out what is reasonable and as an attorney, the costs of these copies are going to go down,” Washburn said on Wednesday.
The county attorney verified the seven-day timeline for obtaining a public record only applies if a record is not “readily available.”
Washburn is also the owner and publisher of the weekly newspaper, Dresden Enterprise.
If adopted, Washburn said each office within the county would have the option to execute the schedule of charges for public records copies as well as whether or not to have requestors fill out the documentation for record retrieval.
Weakley County Commis-sioners will vote on the resolution during a formal quarterly session at 5:30 p.m. Monday at the Weakley County courthouse in Dresden.
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