LIFTING THE CURTAIN: THE REAL PRICE TAG OF TRANSPARENCY
Rachel Godin | rgodin1@kent.edu
Considering the recent increase in news focused on police brutality in Cleveland, a class of upper-division, computer-assisted reporting students at Kent State University, sought out protocol files and use-of-force reports from police departments in surrounding states.
The students made calls and sent requests for these public records to departments and waited for a response. A few of the 16 students received the digital documents they requested. But for others, accessing these files proved difficult.
In my case, the city of East Lansing, Michigan said they did not possess the technology necessary to create a ASCII digital file. Furthermore, they wanted to charge me over $20,000 for copied pages of information.
Needless to say, I did not purchase the files and my records request went unfilled.
The students made calls and sent requests for these public records to departments and waited for a response. A few of the 16 students received the digital documents they requested. But for others, accessing these files proved difficult.
In my case, the city of East Lansing, Michigan said they did not possess the technology necessary to create a ASCII digital file. Furthermore, they wanted to charge me over $20,000 for copied pages of information.
"Searching, complication and examination of records to prepare for a review, if done by the lowest paid capable employee, will result in estimated labor charges and necessary copying fees of approximately $21,350.00... the total charges could go higher."
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| Godin's City of East Lansing's public records response letter |
Andrew Bugel, another student in the CAR class, received a similar response from Madison, Wisconsin after requesting the same files. WU asked for a prepayment of $1,750 prior to any processing. Bugel expressed concern over his public records request experience:
“As college students I think we should be able to have access to those files for a lower price. Personally, I think it’s sad that we had to go through this much trouble to get those files in general and once we received information, a lot of us didn’t receive accurate numbers.”
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| Bugel's Records Request Response from WU |
Agencies are allowed under the law to charge for things like search time or even copying related to a public record request. But it wasn’t until our class received charge quotes like these that the real price tag of transparency was revealed. High costs limit public accessibility to the goings-on of many state judicial institutions. What transparency, if any, is there when an average member of the public sector cannot afford the information that is by-law the right of the public to access?Why aren’t emails and important documents such as use-of-force incident reports archived for easy accessibility for the department as well as the public?
Mark Horvit, Executive Director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, explained that such high prices are often used as a bluff-like defense by public agencies who do not want to give out or go to the trouble to release information.
For best results when trying to access records, Horvit said journalists should fully comprehend their state's record request laws and be able to communicate with the agency their knowledge, citing specific court case examples if necessary.
