OLYMPIA — An effort aimed at making it smoother though potentially more costly to obtain public records has cleared a critical legislative hurdle.
The state House has approved two bills that would allow collection of new fees for digital records, assist government agencies with training and record keeping technology, and study the value of creating an online portal through which many public documents could one day be found.
There also are provisions to limit requests generated automatically by computer programs and to help cities, counties and special districts deal with really broad demands for documents that can hamper, and at times bog down, day-to-day operations of the agency.
The two bills, which passed March 3, represent some of the most notable changes in Washington’s sacred doctrine of open government and are viewed as a response to an increasing appetite for records and evolving technologies to send and receive them.
“All of us in this room treasure our Public Records Act,” said Rep. Joan McBride, D-Kirkland, on the House floor. “This just brings us into this century.”
Next up for House Bills 1594 and 1595 is consideration by the Senate State Government Committee whose chairman, Sen. Mark Miloscia, R-Federal Way, plans hearings before deciding whether to advance them.
“Some agencies are doing a very poor job of getting their records to the public,” he said. “I have some strong ideas on how our local governments need to improve in order to provide public records more efficiently and effectively.
“I don’t want to do anything that impedes the public’s and the Fourth Estate’s access to public documents,” he said. “We will be making sure we continue to have the best open records law in the country.”
For several years, some House members have attempted to make changes in response to agencies that contend handling vexatious requests can eat up a lot of staff time and thus the taxpayer dollars used to pay their salaries.
Last summer, McBride and Rep. Terry Nealey, R-Dayton, brought together roughly 50 people representing requesters and agencies to try to sort out problems and find solutions. Five meetings later, two bills emerged. Subsequent talks during the session further honed the legislation.
“I don’t see this in any way, shape or form making it more difficult to get records,” said Rep. John Koster, R-Arlington, who voted for both bills. “This is a big step.”
Toby Nixon, president of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, took part in the key negotiations.
“It’s been an interesting battle,” he said. “I think we’ve got to something we think accomplishes the goals of agencies and is not too onerous for requesters.”
Many of the final changes in the two bills emerged from talks Nixon and Rowland Thompson, lobbyist for Allied Daily Newspapers, conducted with Candice Bock of the Association of Washington Cities and Jennifer Ziegler of the Washington State Association of Counties.
Under House Bill 1594, the offices of the attorney general and state archivist must provide consultation and training for local agencies on properly handling requests. The hope is this will reduce the risk of mistakes that result in lawsuits.
Grants would be available to local governments to acquire new technology for processing requests. Money for grants and training would come from a $1 surcharge on the document recording fee collected by counties. The fee will sunset in 2020 under an amendment from Koster.
Also, the state archivist will undertake a study for a statewide public records request portal.
Under House Bill 1595, new language is added to the Public Records Act allowing a request for all or substantially all records of an agency to be rejected as too broad. However, a request for “all records” on a particular topic or containing a particular keyword is a legitimate request.
Multiple requests from the same requester in a single day can be turned down, under this bill. It must be shown that the request was generated by a computer program, also known as a BOT, and “if the agency establishes that responding to the multiple requests would cause excessive interference with other essential functions of the agency.”
Another change: a person can submit their request by email and cannot be required to use a particular request form online.
This bill also contains new fees to help agencies recover some of their costs, including 10 cents per page scanned into an electronic format, 5 cents for every four electronic attachments uploaded to an electronic delivery system and 10 cents per gigabyte of data. Or, a government body can charge a flat $2 fee as an alternative to the other fees and it can waive any fees if it wishes.
Thompson expressed concern about the flat fee, which was $5 in the original bill. He also said agencies will need to develop a system for handling a lot of small payments efficiently and there might be a need for additional language dealing with this.
Nealey, in the House debate on his bill, said there is a need to update the law to “get at the bad apples” among requesters.
“I think we’re on the right track,” he said.
Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623; jcornfield@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @dospueblos.
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