Proposed Fees to Copy Public Records Come Under Fire

How much should Tennessee citizens pay to get copies of public records?

That’s the question before the Office of Open Records Counsel, which took public comments on the proposed fees today.

Under the proposal, citizens would pay 20 cents per page of black and white, or 50 cents for color. The policy would also charge extra to cover labor costs for requests that take more than a few hours to fill.

That didn’t sit well with attorney Alan Johnson, general counsel for the Tennessee Coalition on Open Government.

“I don’t believe that the public should be required to pay government employees’ salaries to perform a job that they’re already being paid to perform.”

Johnson says custodians are already legally obligated to make public records available for copy.

But Brentwood City Attorney Roger Horner says the cost to some cities is more than just paper and ink.

He says most cities don’t have workers dedicated to copying public records. That means if a request takes several hours of an employee’s time, it interferes with their usual job, at the city’s expense.

The counsel meets again September 15, and is expected to finalize the fees by next month.

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The proposal also came under fire from members of the press, who said it would charge them unfairly.

In a written statement that was read aloud during the hearing, Knoxville News Sentinel editor Jack McElroy criticized charging extra for labor.

“Although the language in the proposal encourages records custodians to use the most efficient method to provide records, my experience of more than 30 years in the newspaper business leads me to fear that at times, governments will slow-walk a request for information that might prove embarrassing or annoying to the agency involved.

“A two-hour threshold makes it relatively easy for a recalcitrant agency to push even a simple records request into a realm of expense beyond the means of an ordinary citizen. Even when dealing with a news organization, a government department could quickly stymie a serious investigation by imposing burdensome labor charges.”

But Chattanooga deputy police chief Mark Rawlston said the proposal provides for too much free labor.

“We don’t have a copy clerk whose job is to sit and make copies. Some of these requests for production of documents take literally hundreds of hours. Hundreds of hours for free to provide the documents for inspection, followed by one photocopy made out of thousands of pages of documents. The personnel cost to cities is just beyond comprehension in these open records requests.”

Under amendments to the Tennessee Public Records Act in effect since July, until the office establishes a rate of reasonable charges, public provisions allow custodians of state records to charge requestors for actual costs to provide copies. Under that provision requestors can also be charged for labor after the first five hours.