Advocates scrutinize Iowa open record request costs

Iowa law allows its government agencies to charge a 'reasonable fee' to provide public documents ranging from court records to public employee salary lists.

But what is a reasonable fee?

Charlie Smithson, director of the Iowa Public Information Board, plans to ask the Iowa Legislature next year to define what constitutes a reasonable cost.

'We need to make sure there is some balance, make sure it (the fee) is not to dissuade the public from seeking records,' said Smithson, who took over board leadership in December.

This is Sunshine Week, to help promote access to public information nationwide. This access is vital to news organizations, which use public records to keep track of government decisions, spending and treatment of citizens.

But anyone may seek public records. Other frequent requesters are lawyers, public employees or Iowans with business or personal interest in government agencies.

A few examples of public information costs recently cited by Iowa agencies include:

l The Iowa City Community School District told the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism in February 2014 it would charge up to $50 for a copy of the district's policy on emergencies that require school lockdown and parent notification. Other districts had provided the information free.

When reporters replied that the Iowa Attorney General's Office has said the public is entitled to a 'free peek' at public records, the district relented. It took one month for the reporters to get the policy, according to the center's executive director, Lyle Muller.

l The Iowa Department of Corrections said it would cost $2,000 to provide sexual violence incident reports to the Marshall Project, a New York not-for-profit that reports on the criminal justice system, according to a Nov. 19 Associated Press report. Corrections officials said the costs included employee time to review, redact and print the documents. The Public Information Board sided with Corrections.

l The Cedar Rapids Community School District quoted The Gazette earlier this year $260,000 to provide summary data, policies, curriculum documents and emails related to student discipline as part of a story on the ongoing federal investigation of racial disparities in the district's discipline practices.

When The Gazette asked for a breakdown of the cost, it dropped to $83,967. The Gazette then worked with district leaders to come to a compromise of $740 for most of the documents originally requested.

The University of Iowa, which receives about 350 public records requests a year, provides one free hour of staff time to gather records, then charges $30 an hour. Requests that require computer programming or data extraction cost $75 an hour.

But UI Transparency Officer Ann Goff doesn't charge requesters for the time she spends routing the requests to the right source, holding status meetings and reminding sources of deadlines, she said. The UI created a website a few years ago to automate the process.

As the number and complexity of records requests increase in the state of Iowa, openness advocates say agencies — especially small ones with few employees — must be fairly compensated so requests don't rob them of the ability to serve the public in other ways.

'Some costs are certainly reasonable, but how much 'costs'?' Arthur Bonfield, a University of Iowa law professor who helped write Iowa's open records law, said at a forum in October. 'I do think there is a serious issue brewing.'