Fees deter access to public records
PM EDITION
Monday, June 20, 2022
NEWSBOY contents
Pre-meeting report
RE: Public records fees
Presidential quote
County gov’t
Proposed ordinance would weaken open gov’t
Freedom to obtain public records from the county is under attack.
New fees, if approved, would certainly deter some records requestors for financial reasons.
Section 5.190.010 creates fees to compensate the County for staff and/or attorney time spent on responding to requests for County records. Requesters who are identifiable natural persons will receive one full hour of time expended on requests free of charge each month. Requesters will be required to pay to the County a good faith estimate of the total fee to be charged prior to the County commencing work processing a request. –County of Mendocino
County Counsel Christian M. Curtis sponsored the proposed ordinance.
The county uses an online public records portal.
Some requests are made public (for all to see) within the portal.
The county gets requests from citizens and the professional media who may need records for a large scale investigative project, for example.
A request could be something about health care from a Sacramento Bee reporter, a university group or just someone who wants to know if their neighbors have all the right permits.
The CPRA holds government accountable.
A citizen or a journalist can ask for anything, but emails or phone calls can be ignored.
File a CPRA request and they have to respond within 10-days.
There are other safeguards in the law.
Government agencies cannot make documents that you ask for.
In other words, if they do not have what you asked for, they have to say so.
Some things can be redacted, yes.
This could be construed as a move to deter access to financial records, emails or other information that the county controls.
THINK ABOUT IT: The more transparent the County of Mendocino becomes, the less compelled citizens and journalists will be to file formal CPRA requests.
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