The Art of Keeping Public Records from the Public

I have dealt with public records for most of my life. I have been the custodian of records as a police official and regulator and I have been on the receiving end as a detective, alderman and a journalist. I have always been a strong believer that the public has a right to see and obtain records. It is the foundation of open government. This is apparently a view not shared by most city officials in Manchester.

Recently Alderman Hal Roth had to pay $300 out of his pocket to obtain the Mayor Dave Willson's expense account records. City hall staff then tried to ding him for another $160 when he picked up the documents.

Roth brought up the matter of aldermen access to city records for discussion at the Nov. 15 aldermanic meeting. The discussion turned into a lecture by Manchester City Attorney Pat Gunn telling the aldermen that they must charge for records and aldermen have to be treated just like members of the public. This is somewhat unique to Manchester. 

Aldermen are slightly different than the public at large when it comes to the city's business. Part of an alderman's job is oversight. It is hard to do any oversight if you are kept from looking at records. It is an elected officials duty and obligation to be sure policy and city laws are being followed, that tax money is being spent wisely and no favoritism is being shown.  

That aside, if city employees can obtain and copy the requested records in a reasonable amount of time without a prolonged interruption of work, the public should be able to see the records at no charge and get copies at a cost no more that 10-cents a page.

However, Gunn thinks differently. He argued that the city must charge by state law for the city clerk's time to watch you review the records. He also wants the employee's salary to be paid while the employee makes copies on top of the 10-cent per copy charge. He also wants himself to be paid while he reviews the records request and the records. That could take hours.

"Any person has to file a Sunshine Law request and be accessed a charge," said Gunn.  "The legislative statutue says alderman just like every other citizen have to be teated the same when examining public records," he added.

Of course that is not what the law says at all. It says all public records are to be available for public inspection and that the government body MAY charge not that it must charge. 

According to the Missouri Attorney General's Office, "Unless otherwise provided by law, records of a public governmental body are to be open and available to the public for inspection and copying. The governmental body may charge up to 10 cents per page for standard copies and the actual cost of the copy for larger or specialized documents (such as maps, photos and graphics). The body also may charge a reasonable fee for the time necessary to search for and copy public records."

Suddenly a simple request, that some aldermen argued was in the name of public interest, to find out how much tax money was paid to the mayor beyond his salary has turned into a $300 bill for an alderman. Ironically the information had to be at the finance director's fingertips.       

Alderman Bob Tullock joined Roth expressing concern at a recent meeting.

"When you start tagging people $100, $150, $200 to get public records it keeps people from asking. That is not supposed to be what we are doing," Tullock said during the meeting.  

I once had a local government try and throw up a road block over obtaining public records in recent years, but I eventually got them at no charge. In 2006 Town and Country Mayor Jon Dalton was bragging what a great job the "Blue Ribbon" committee on fire services had done the prior year in recommending that the city sign a five-year contract renewal with the . 2005 was the same year that Dalton was a paid lobbyist in Jefferson City for the fire district.

Dalton at first denied my request saying the records were closed as they were used as part of a contract negotiation. I pointed out the contract had been signed by Dalton in Dec., 2005 and his argument was moot. It wasn't until I hired a lawyer to file suit was when I got the records, sort of. I got a consultant's report on fire service and a copy of the alderman's power point presentation, but not the "Blue Ribbon" committee's report because they never wrote one and never made any recommendations. 

This of course made me ask exactly who awarded Dalton's committee a Blue Ribbon.  However, there was no charge for the stuff I got.   

Since then as a one-term alderman, I made record requests on a regular basis and always promptly got the information from a city staff member at no charge. The same is true now for Town and Country residents asking for deer management contribution information and other spending information.

When I was working in Maryland, our philosophy on public records requests was not to charge for records if the request could be filed in under 30 minutes. The thinking was "why do you want to tick off someone who may already have an axe to grind." In the case of a press request, why tick off a reporter who works for someone who buys ink by the barrel.

The $300 charge to alderman for a records request leads to the question of Alderman Roth: What did you feel like when they charged you $300 and tried to charge you $460 for doing your job?

"What are they hiding? What can there be they don't want me to see," Roth replied.