 |
|
|
| 11/25/2008 8:50:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | Open records audit finds 30 percent of requests not answered legally
Survey shows slight erosion in compliance since 1999
A statewide audit has found that officials fail to follow Wisconsin's open records statutes in nearly 30 percent of all open records requests, according to a survey by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Local governments denied or ignored one in 10 such requests for basic documents, the survey found, while another two in 10 were fulfilled only after records custodians required such things as asking requesters to identify themselves or explain why they wanted the documents.
Asking for identity or cause violates state law.
The finding of a full compliance rate of 71.7 percent represents a slight decline since 1999, when a similar audit showed a 74 percent full compliance rate.
The FOIC and UW made 318 public records requests in 65 counties in September and October. Journalists and citizens were asked to request basic records, the FOIC stated.
"We were not trying to trick anyone," Bill Lueders, the FOIC's president and the news editor of Isthmus newspaper, said in a statement. "We asked for basic information that no one should have any problems getting. And yet there were problems."
Those problems stretched across the state, the audit determined, from Adams County, where a sheriff's deputy said a jail booking log "was not public record" and refused to allow a reporter to see it despite repeated requests, to Eau Claire County, where a city attorney determined that a request for all emails sent by the city manager on Sept. 2 "did not include a reasonable limitation as to subject matter" and therefore was an improper request, to Waupaca, where the police department denied a request for a list of police calls to the local high school, and beyond.
Some municipalities charged as much as $5 a page for photocopies, while one school district charged $25 for meeting minutes and agendas, the FOIC stated.
In Oneida County, the school district, the sheriff's department and the Rhinelander police department all fulfilled their requests properly. However, the requests for the Rhinelander chief municipal officer's emails and for an unidentified township's legal bills were either ignored or denied.
In Vilas County, all five open records requests were fulfilled, but the FOIC did note a problem with cost concerning the request to the Vilas County Sheriff's Department.
"The Vilas County Sheriff's Office charged $5 for three pages that showed the booking information on five inmates," the audit stated.
"The good news is that the majority of requests were fulfilled pretty easily," Jason Shepard, a Ph.D. candidate at the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said. "The bad news is that we found lots of ways in which records custodians deter people from accessing even the most basic public records."
Audit details
Lueders said his group focused on a fairly narrow area of open-records compliance - whether simple records could be obtained readily on request.
"There are other common problems having to do with fees, delays and gray areas where custodians have to weigh competing interests," he said. "This audit did not seek to quantify those."
Of the 318 reported responses, 228 responses, or 71.7 percent, were reported as being fulfilled without any problem, the audit stated. In 31 cases, it continued, requests were either denied or ignored, while another 59 requests were fulfilled with some problem, including custodians who required the identity of the requester or the reasons for the request before complying.
"We appreciate that many of the problems owe to a lack of training or awareness and are not because public officials like to keep secrets," Lueders said. "But in fact, the statewide compliance rate for providing this information should have been 100 percent."
The FOIC developed a list of five records to be requested. Auditors were then asked to request the documents in person, and news organizations were asked, when possible, to send individuals who would not be recognized as journalists, according to the audit.
The auditors were instructed to request from the county's largest school district the "copies of meeting agendas and minutes that show each occasion when the school board went into closed session in April, May and June 2008"; from the county sheriff's department "jail booking logs for the past 48 hours, or documents showing the names and tentative charges of individuals booked into the county jail in the past 48 hours"; from the county's largest city police department "documents, such as a list of police calls, that show when and why police were called to one given high school (provide them with the street address) between Jan. 1, 2008, and July 1, 2008"; from a township "documents showing total legal fees paid by the town for the last complete fiscal year"; and from a city mayor or administrator "all emails sent by the chief municipal officer on Sept. 2, 2008."
Findings
The audit found ongoing problems in all areas.
Among school boards, for example, some districts refused outright to turn over minutes of closed meeting sessions, while others appeared to keep no written records of closed sessions at all, according to the audit.
"The study's findings show that school boards do not seem to have a consistent approach to keeping minutes of closed session discussions, nor do they have consistent practices for dealing with requests for closed session minutes," the audit stated.
Problems with jail book logs were even greater in scope.
"Of the 65 sheriff's offices surveyed this year, one in three sheriff's offices had problems in providing access to a list of recently booked inmates," the audit stated. "Six offices refused to turn over records, while another 16 offices made auditors comply with requirements that violated the open records law."
Requests for police calls to local high schools were granted in 55 cases and denied or ignored in 10 cases, the audit found.
"The Waupaca Police Department denied a request for police calls to the local high school because juvenile names would be revealed, according to the requester," the study stated. "The law, however, requires custodians to redact sensitive information rather than deny access to the rest of the document. The majority of police departments readily turned over records, and many did so at the time of the request."
On the town level, the study found, auditors bumped into personnel issues.
"The most significant problem encountered by requesters seeking documents showing the legal fees paid by town boards was the lack of a staffed town hall," the audit stated. "When town clerks or town board chairmen were contacted, most were helpful. In six cases, requests were denied or ignored. Requests were fulfilled in 56 cases."
Finally, the audit stated, several requesters reported that mayors or city administrators were "surprised and taken aback" by requests for emails they sent on a given date.
"Many consulted lawyers before turning over emails," the audit stated. ". . . In one of the more unusual reasons for denial, the city attorney in Eau Claire County claimed that a request for all emails sent by the city manager on Sept. 2 'did not include a reasonable limitation as to subject matter.'"
All totaled, nine requests were either denied or ignored, and 52 were fulfilled, the audit stated.
No Improvement
Despite attempts to educate public officials about the open records law - the attorney general's office conducts annual open-records seminars around the state, for example - the audit showed a slight erosion in compliance levels among public officials over a similar audit conducted in 1999.
In that survey, records were turned over in full compliance 74 percent of the time, compared to 71.7 percent this time. Seventeen percent of the requests were fulfilled in 1999 but only after some problems were encountered, compared with 18.6 percent this time. In 1999 nine percent of the records were not provided at all; that number rose slightly to 9.7 percent this time.
There were some areas of improvement.
While one-third of the state's sheriff's departments posed problems for requesters seeking information about recently booked inmates this year, in 1999 45 sheriff's departments, or more than half, resisted the request in some way or denied it.
Wisconsin's open records law was passed in 1981. All citizens have the same right - whether they represent news media or not - to access open records; the law does not require that people identify themselves or state a reason for wanting the records.
The audit was funded by a grant from the National Freedom of Information Coalition and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Established in 1950, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation makes national grants in journalism, education and arts and culture.
|
Comment on this story
|
|
|
|
