Media officials and government transparency advocates expressed their opposition to Wisconsin lawmakers Wednesday against a proposed bill permitting government institutions to charge for access to public records.
Those against the bill said applying charges to the right to use records inhibits access to them and helps bureaucrats who want to keep such information secretive.
Public custodians, such as city clerks who keep track of public records, testified in support of the legislation drafted by eight Republicans and one Democrat at an Assembly Committee on Government Operations and State Licensing’s open hearing.
Public officials, including a Washington County supervisor, University of Wisconsin records keepers and police department representatives, said it is appropriate to be compensated for the time they spend removing confidential information from these records.
“Transparency of government is important, but there has to be a balance,” Melanie Rutledge, assistant city attorney for Milwaukee, said. “There has to be a sharing of costing responding to some of these requests.”
Representatives on the committee did not vote on the proposed bill at the end of the hearing. Committee Chairman Rep. Tyler August, R-Lake Geneva, said the earliest possible vote for the bill would occur at the end of March, but only if he decides it is worthy of a vote.
The open records law under scrutiny went into effect in 1981, but came under reconsideration last June when the Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously ruled government bodies could not charge for access to these public records.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel won the ruling in this case after the Milwaukee Police Department requested more than $4,500 from the publication to cover costs of redacting approximately 750 crime incident reports, according to the case facts.
“We consider [the bill] a serious threat to the open records law,” Michael Juley, the Journal Sentinel’s police and courts editor, said. “We strongly believe there is no need to revise the current law.”
Part of the reason state institutions want to charge for public records access is because superfluous requests for the right to use them place a burden on public custodians, according to Washington County Supervisor Dennis Myers.
Juley said that Journal Sentinel reporters routinely work “closely and tirelessly” with public records operators to ensure the records they request are specific and do not waste custodians’ time.
Rep. Brett Hulsey, D-Madison, said public records keepers have the right to ask for specific titles when citizens or members of the media request the right to use information that may be unnecessarily difficult for custodians to access.
“In your business, you have reporters on deadline, so you don’t have reporters running around trying to get frivolous open records access,” he said.
Hulsey added municipal officials could save on these costs by delegating public records redaction to clerks who make lower annual salaries. He also said the digital age technology could save printing costs and make the process of records sharing more efficient.
UW Director of State Relations Don Nelson said there is a higher cost associated with processing more records, and legal officials must check off on privacy enforcement as well.
“Lawyers have to review these things,” Nelson said. “There are plenty of lawyers out there in the private sector that would love to make sure we are following the law … those costs do exist.”
