subject: Examine New Laws About Requests For Public Records [print this page] At some point in everyone's life they will have to make a request for a public record. This might entail any kind of information on a federal or state report. They may include both state and federal records as well as those corporate records available in the public domain, depending on the federal and state laws you are subject to.
Not too long ago, a bill was created to assist government workers and the public when specific public records are wanted. The inability to determine the difference between excessive requests and the legitimate need for public records may get in the way of the government's obligation to provide requested records as quickly as possible.
The purpose of the Fagan Bill is to establish the fine line between the public's need for records and the government's ability - in terms of both manpower and hard costs such as photocopies - to finance and provide them. Unnecessary requests for providing public records are time consuming as the government has restricted the budget to provide public record information so the public records office has to maintain a strict procedure. This is especially applicable when large requests are made, since budget cuts have forced many offices to make cuts to their staff.
A lot of the time, rather than asking for necessary paperwork from government agencies, you may be able to locate them on the internet. They've gained a greater amount of accessibility as the World Wide Web evolves and given services are extended. Looking into this route may save time in addition to lessening the cost of trips needed to find records.
But like with any service some might misuse the process. Asking for records to often strains the system. Locating records and getting them to those requesting the records cause workers to spend inordinate amounts of time. The Fagan Bill would discourage both excessive and frivolous requests.
The bill would virtually eliminate the requests that are an abuse of the system of allowing a public agency to charge an advance fee if a request for documents takes more than five hours to locate and make available within a month. There have been a few instances which show that too many requests have been received for the reason of stopping employees from being able to give them in a timely manner on purpose. In that case the requestor can sue claiming the group has violated the Public Records Act.
Legitimate request would be allowed but the Fagan bill will eliminate more frivolous requests. As per the bill, the one, who need to inspect public records or for locating them for the individual to copy, no charges applied. The sole expense might be the price of Xeroxing when using the public records group's machines. To cite an example of the type of requests, in Mesa, Washington in 2007, an unhappy former mayor called for over 170 public records, this type of legislation is already in force in thirty US states including Washington, DC. A court fined the city $230,000, while the small staff at the city's office was overwhelmed by requests. The city's total budget was $340,000 basically because it had suffered due to a frivolous request that was made out of spite.
This behavior is exactly what the Fagan Bill was created to stop. Some would be surprised at the value. This is a dilemma for little towns with not enough employees, and if the Fagan Bill is passed, it could be of great use for fixing this problem.
