Voice For Liberty

Category: Open records

  • Alaska Climate Change Sub-Cabinet: Not an Example of Sarah Palin’s Transparent Government

    Paul Chesser of Climate Strategies Watch has done some investigative work seeking to understand the role of The Center for Climate Strategies in Alaska.

    (The Alaska Climate Change Sub-Cabinet plays the same role there that the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group (KEEP) plays here.)

    In his excellent and informative post Palin, Alaska’s Climate Commission, and (Lack of) Transparency, Paul traces the formation of the climate change panel in Alaska by Governor Sarah Palin and CCS’s involvement in that. At the same time, he illustrates the frustration that those making records requests of government agencies often experience.

    You can also read about CCS’s appointment recommendations. Did CCS also make these recommendations in Kansas? I’d like to know. But as Paul’s article shows, sometimes finding the answer to these questions is difficult and time-consuming.

  • Bobby Rozzell’s Great Idea for Wichita Leaders

    At the imaginatively-named Bobby Rozzell’s Blog the author has a suggestion for Wichita government. Here’s the idea:

    Some smart local leader is going to figure out that social media (blogging and such) has the potential for building relationships with a large number of citizens. A number that would be impossible if it was attempted physically. This smart local leader will start a blog and will be respected for their transparency and willingness to engage in a conversation rather than post a few pronouncements every so often. This smart local leader will be the beginning of something good.

    A great idea! Outstanding! As someone who files records requests once in a while, and asks informally for information at other times, there are some local governmental bodies and officials that either don’t believe transparency is important, or don’t know how to go about accomplishing it. Yet, they insist they want to be held accountable.

    There are some other observations about the local Wichita blogging scene in the full post at Everytime he passed a window they heard him say, “So far so good.”

  • When A Records Request Fails

    When a citizen makes a records requests and the records that were received don’t match the request, what should the citizen do?

    The records I received match the request I made in that they relate to the governmental entity and its relationship to a certain business, but they are for a time period much older than what I requested. Further, what wasn’t supplied to me are documents that I am certain exist, and would be dated within the time frame I specified.

    Do citizen records requests come with a warranty?

  • Open records in Kansas follow-up

    I have been recruited to participate in the Sunshine Blogger Project, an effort to gauge the compliance of the nations’ governors with open records laws as they exist in each state. I wrote about my experience with the office of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius in this article: Open Records in Kansas.

    The letter I received from JaLynn Copp, the Assistant Chief Counsel to Governor Sebelius, was so confusing that I wrote back requesting clarification. I had to communicate this request by writing on the processed fibers of dead trees, which were then delivered to Topeka by carbon-spewing trucks operated by the United States Postal Service, as Ms. Copp did not share an email address with me.

    My records request had specifically asked that the email records I was requesting be delivered to me electronically. That seemed to make a lot of sense, as email is nothing if not electronic. But the governor’s office won’t comply with that request.

    The governor’s office, legitimately, must review the emails to determine whether any fall under the exceptions to the open records act. The office will do that by reading the emails on a computer. Then, if an email is judged not to fall under one of the exemptions, it will be printed and sent to me, at a cost of $.25 per page.

    There seems to be no interest at the governor’s office in providing the records in any other form. I could wind up spending thousands of dollars to print thousands of pages of spam.

    The Wichita Eagle wrote a story about this, and a few of the comments left by readers on the newspaper’s website were alarming. One comment read: “The request was irresponsible! If there was a legitimate need for particular information, that would be one thing, but to demand all of the emails the Governor received across any given four days is ludicrous, and wasteful. … If there was a specific issue needing verified or researched, and a public need or good, then the fees would be onerous.”

    I might ask this writer these questions: Who determines what qualifies as a “legitimate need?” How would I know if there was a specific issue needing research, without seeing all the emails? Should we rely on government agencies to judge which records will satisfy our interests?

    Another reader left a comment that made a charge of hypocrisy for the media wanting government records to be open, but refusing to open their own records. This reader has forgotten the difference between the government and a private institution.

  • Open records in Kansas

    Recently I was recruited to participate in the Sunshine Blogger Project. Its purpose is to “find out whether America’s governors properly archive the e-mail that comes into and goes out of their offices, and are able to provide copies of those e-mails when members of the public request them.”

    I believe that open records and meetings are important, both to news media and citizens, so I agreed to take part in the project.

    On February 7, 2008 I mailed (by postal mail) my request for the records of interest, which are emails sent and received by the office of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius for a recent four-day period. We asked that the emails be delivered electronically, which seems natural given that computerization is the essence of email.

    On February 15 I received a letter from JaLynn Copp, the Assistant Chief Counsel to the Governor, stating that the office is “in the process of reviewing your request and generating a response.”

    As of February 25 I hadn’t received that response, so I called to inquire. I left a message requesting my call to be returned. Over the next few days I made several calls and left messages, but no one returned my call. Finally I was able to reach the Assistant Chief Counsel, who then briefly described the details spelled out in a letter that I received on February 28.

    The Governor’s office has approximately 25 full-time employees, the letter explained. It will take a minimum of two hours for each employee to conduct a review of each employee’s computer to see if any of the requested emails fall under one of the many exemptions to the Kansas Open Records Act. This adds up to $1,350. The office requests payment before any work will be done.

    The letter I received contained this paragraph:

    I will look into the possibility of providing our response in electronic form as you have requested. This may be an additional charge; I can let you know what that is if it is possible. If it is not possible, then we would provide the information in hard copy and this would cost .25 per page. Of course, we will not know the up front costs of how many pages this would be until we do the searches. This would be assessed after we have done the searches and would need to be paid before we turned over the documents to you.

    I found this paragraph remarkable. I am not able to fully understand what this means, and I have written to ask for clarification. Part of what I wrote is this:

    I have a question or two. Will the total cost be the estimated $1,350 for reviewing plus $.25 per printed page that is supplied to me? Will your office be performing the review reading from printed pages or from reading the emails on a computer in their original electronic form?

    I ask because it seems to me that if the review is going to be conducted by reading the emails on a computer, then printing costs could be avoided. Alternatively, if the review will be performed by reading printed pages of paper, then perhaps the $.25 per printed page charge could be waived, as the material would have been already printed.

    I’ll update this article when I receive an answer. It may take some time, as the Assistant Chief Counsel did not share an email address with me.

    Recommended sites: State Sunshine and Open Records, WikiFOIA, the wiki for helping people understand and use the Freedom of Information Act at the state and local level, Kansas Sunshine Coalition for Open Government.