After years of not having a uniform process for responding to public records requests, the City and Borough of Juneau finalized one this week.
At its meeting Monday, the CBJ Assembly approved a set of guidelines for responding to public records requests, one that doesn’t specify a response time for the city clerk’s office to respond to requests.
American Society of News Editors (ASNE) Legal Counsel Kevin Goldberg said that aspect of the new policy is concerning, particularly for larger requests.
“The response time problem, I think is a big one,” Goldberg said. “The lack of a definite response time, any sort of enforcement mechanism there, is a big problem.”
The guidelines that the Assembly adopted Monday states that “requests will be responded to as staff time allows without interrupting the orderly conduct” of city business. The State of Alaska guidelines dictate that a public agency has 10 working days to respond to requests, which the city followed prior to now.
After processing a large public records requests earlier this year, CBJ attorney Amy Mead wrote a letter to the Alaska Attorney General saying that she needed more time to process the request, Mead said. The Attorney General’s office wrote back, saying that state regulations don’t apply to municipalities. If cities want to follow state regulations that’s fine, but they’re not required to do so, so the CBJ drafted its own ordinance based on state regulations and other municipalities around the state, including Homer, Mead said.
Mead said she doesn’t anticipate “any meaningful difference in how (requests) are processed by the CBJ.” The new guidelines will go into effect in about a month.
Monday’s vote passed by a 6-3 vote, with Assembly members Maria Gladziszewski, Loren Jones and Jesse Kiehl voting against it. Gladziszewski was particularly vocal in her opposition.
“I think it’s gonna make it harder for citizens to find out how their government operates,” Gladziszewski said, “and in a time when trust in government is not very high, I don’t think this is something we should do this far.”
Kiehl expressed concerns about the fees associated with requests as well. According to the ordinance, if the review and production of records exceeds five hours in a month, the requestor must pay all costs for producing the records. This is in order to encourage requestors to make more specific requests. Goldberg pointed out that there’s not a set fee for requestors, and that the fees are based off staff salary, which could vary based on which city staff members are involved in processing the request.
Assembly member Jerry Nankervis, who voted in favor of the ordinance, said he doesn’t think the stricter guidelines will result in fewer requests, and that it will save Mead some time.
“I think what this will do is get requests that are more channeled and more focused,” Nankervis said, “and not nearly the fishing expeditions that put a grinding halt to the law department, at least one member of the law department, for weeks at a time.”
During the most recent discussion of this ordinance, at the July 12 Committee of the Whole meeting, Mead said most of the requests that the city receives are already fairly simple. During that same meeting, Clerk Laurie Sica said that to date in 2017, there were about 20 requests that “took significant research,” according to the meeting minutes.
Goldberg said he’s seen many public records policies that are more restrictive than Juneau’s, even on a state level. Nationally, he’s seeing a trend in using fees to deter people from making records requests.
“Sometimes maybe it’s unintentional but I’m not always sure it is,” Goldberg said of using fees as a barrier to access. “That clearly happens at the state and municipal level quite often, which is always a red flag when it comes up anywhere.”
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at alex.mccarthy@juneauempire.com.
