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Open records office on court ruling: Agencies can't charge 'labor fees'

A state appeals court ruled government agencies can't charge citizens for research time.

By JEFF FRANTZ Daily Record/Sunday News

York, PA - Open records advocates are praising a state appeals court ruling that they say ensures citizens won't be excessively charged to receive government records. A panel of three Commonwealth Court justices ruled that the State Employees Retirement System cannot recover the cost of employees' labor in creating documents tailored to specific requests because the same information was available -- in a less organized and less convenient form -- in records that already existed. The law allows agencies to recover copying charges -- 25 cents a page is the recommended maximum -- and expenses "necessarily incurred" in responding to records requests. "You cannot, in essence, charge labor fees," said Terry Mutchler, the executive director of Pennsylvania's Office of Open Records. That's the way the office has interpreted the law since it was overhauled in 2009, Mutchler said, and this ruling backs that up. More than 90 percent of people who request records are members of the public, Mutchler said, and many of them are making one-time requests. High fees can be a deterrent to people requesting records they have a legal right to see, Mutchler said. SERS spokesman Robert Gentzel said its employees created a computer program to run a more efficient search in this case, which took time, which is why they charged. "We clearly believe that what we're doing is permitted by the law," he said, adding that he does not know if the agency will appeal. Lawmakers should eventually clarify the law to make it clear when government agencies can and cannot charge citizens for research, said Kim de Bourbon, executive director of the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition. For example, de Bourbon said, if a person requests copies of a blueprint and an agency doesn't have a blueprint copier, it would make sense for the citizen to pay the agency's extra copying fees. But, de Bourbon said, finding routine public records is not extra work for state agencies, it's part of their work, and should not be costly. That some agencies are looking to charge research fees shows how cash-strapped some are, Mutchler said. "Of course we don't think open records are the place to (recoup that money)," Mutchler said. -- The Associated Press contributed to this report. Read more at www.ydr.com

 

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