Paying for public records

Proposal would charge University Park residents for staff time, town documents

According to the MPIA, a resident may view or make copies of town code, town policies, resolutions⁄ordinances, council meeting agenda items, annual budgets and a number of other documents kept at Town Hall without having to make a formal request.

Mayor John Tabori, who initiated the resolution, said that the fees are simply meant as compensation for the time it takes for town staff to gather requested material.

‘‘We’ve had a series of information requests that total at least 30-40 hours of work,” he said. ‘‘That’s costly to us. It occurred to me that rather than having staff running around like chickens with their heads cut off that we might develop procedures.”

Under the resolution, residents would be entitled up to 10 pages of free documents per request.

After that, they will be charged 25 cents per page. For any requests whose materials take staff more than two hours to gather, residents would be charged the hourly rate of whichever town employee is responsible for that request.

Councilwoman Margaret Mallino (Ward 1) said the hourly rate can vary from $50 to $200 an hour, but that it is rare that a request takes over two hours to complete.

DeSaussure said that charging residents for public records goes against the spirit of MPIA.

‘‘The whole law is in the public interest,” DeSaussure said. ‘‘It was written to open up the government. If someone’s paying $40,000 a year in property taxes, they’ll be pretty upset if they come in and ask for a record and it costs them $47 because we don’t know if we can find it.”

DeSaussure is the only member of the seven-member council to publicly oppose the resolution thus far.

‘‘It is standard practice to charge for that,” Councilwoman Margaret Winton (Ward 6) said. ‘‘I work for a nonprofit organization, and when people ask us for records that require time for people to research and go back in archives, we charge.”

Tabori also discussed developing a more organized system to store public records in Town Hall for up to two years before moving them into the town archives. The new system would also entail storing all town files electronically.

Mallino said an improved system would ultimately result in less time spent by staff obtaining paperwork for requests, which would limit the amount that residents are charged.

‘‘We’ve had administrations that change every six years,” she said. ‘‘We have a filing system that’s shifted over time. We don’t have the consistency of an institutional memory. With the advantage of e-files, which we are developing now, this won’t be a problem.”

Neighboring College Park also charges residents for large records and documents.

Tabori said he does not intend for the fee system to act as a revenue source for the town.

‘‘The intent is not to stop someone from [accessing records],” he said. ‘‘The intent is not to bar them. If it takes us two and a half hours, I guarantee you I’m not going to charge them, but if it takes one of my staff members 20 hours, I’d like to be able to charge for that.”

The council is scheduled to vote on the resolution at the Aug. 18 meeting.