By Stephen Dyer, The Associated Press
Akron, Ohio (AP) -- Requests for records that should be public are often met with resistance nationwide, especially from police and school officials.
More than half of states have undergone public records compliance audits and those outcomes show Ohio’s response is typical: At least half of agencies or officials don’t know or don’t appear to care what the law requires.
Audits similar to Ohio’s have found numerous problems:
- An auditor in Oklahoma was followed by police when he asked for crime reports and police radio logs.
- A deputy sheriff in Wisconsin refused to release arrest records, telling the auditor, “If you were arrested, you wouldn’t want your name released, would you?”
- The sheriff’s department in Grant County, Wash., blocked the release of a list of registered sex offenders, saying it could not control how it would be used.
- In Moriarty, N.M., a schools superintendent asked police to check the license plate of an auditor who submitted a request for financial records.
- The mayor of Anderson, S.C., refused to release records because the person asking for them was not a city resident.
There have been occasional stories of helpful officials such as a court clerk in Taos, N.M., who said it was no problem because “all of our records are public information.”
Some state audits found perfect compliance among city or county officials. In Ohio, only Ottawa and Mercer counties had perfect compliance with all six records requests.
“There’s generally a dislike of these kinds of laws,” said Jay Stewart, executive director for the Better Government Association, a Chicago-based government access group.
But Stewart said the audits can help increase public access to government records.
In Indiana, after the state’s newspapers conducted an audit in 1998 -- which showed widespread violations of the state’s public records law -- Indiana legislators created a public access counselor position.
The counselor, Michael Hurst, takes public records questions from the public, reporters and agencies. He hears complaints and issues advisory opinions. He said the largest number of people who contact him are members of the public who want to know why they can’t get a record.
If an Indiana public agency doesn’t follow the public access counselor’s opinion to turn over records, it can be charged attorneys fees and costs in any subsequent lawsuit.
“Public agencies are doing a much better job,” Hurst said.
Missouri, North Carolina and Maine reworked their public records laws after their audits.
Stewart said it helps if record holders face serious punishment when they refuse to supply the records.
One Florida county school board member spent seven days in jail for a 1999 misdemeanor conviction of withholding public records.
Washington state requires agencies that lose open records lawsuits to pay court costs plus a penalty ranging from $5 to $100 for each day the records were withheld.
Punishments like these can open up government records, Stewart said.
Charles Davis, who heads the Freedom of Information Center at the University of Missouri, said Ohio’s roughly 50 percent compliance was “very dispiriting and very typical.”
Davis was particularly troubled by Ohio’s paltry score on releasing school superintendent pay -- a clearly public record that he said “should be stapled to the wall in the office.”
Fewer than 29 percent of Ohio’s surveyed school districts released the record within 24 hours.