Sponsors of changes in a bill that stalled in the Tennessee legislature last winter would like you to pay to inspect public records.
That's not getting photocopies of records, for which government is allowed to charge, but just for simply looking at them.
Tell them what you think
The Office of Open Records Counsel is collecting comments about charging a fee to inspect public records. The public can comment online and in public hearings in Nashville today and and Jackson on Thursday.Email thoughts to comments.open.records@cot.tn.gov and get information about the public hearings at the Office of Open Records Counsel website.
Read more
Sohn: Transparency shouldn't be pay to play
The idea is that government officials must take their time to locate the records and make them available in a viewable format, thus taking time away from their regular duties.
The Office of Open Records Counsel is holding a series of hearings this week about the pay-to-inspect proposal, which could be revised in next year's session. We believe this idea is antithetical to the sunshine and transparency in which government is supposed to operate.
Indeed, as Whit Adamson, president of the Tennessee Association of Broadcasters, suggested to The Associated Press in an email, such payments are comparable to a new tax and would pay for services governments already are expected to be providing.
Gov. Bill Haslam apparently concluded as much after an eight-month review of how state government responds to records requests in 2012, suggesting no major changes needed to be made. And Comptroller Justin Wilson said around the same time that his office would no longer charge for any records fees of less than $25 because it cost his office more to process a payment than to fulfill a records request.
While current law allows governments to charge for photocopies under its Schedule of Reasonable Charges, that statute has been widely abused, according to the Tennessee Press Association. Variously, high estimates for photocopies have been given to scare off open records requests, mileage charges have been assessed to deliver records within an office and citizens have been assessed a $250-per-hour billing rate - as a lawyer might charge - to perform routine record services.
A charge to view records would be open to the same abuse and perhaps more.
Instead, any changes or updates to such labor fees should be part of a comprehensive, objective study like one that was suggested in a "Sunshine-in-Government" subcommittee in 2008 but was never undertaken. Instead, the current Schedule of Reasonable Charges was implemented without any formal study and without uniform rules for local governments. And, if more reasons were needed, in the last seven years, technology has advanced to offer new ways to access and view records.
Clearly, charging citizens to review records would be a giant step backward in open government.