Moscow-Pullman Daily News Blogs

I mentioned in a previous post that we’re witnessing how public agencies can use the Idaho public records law like a hammer, with its provisions that allow for fees to be assesed on requests that take more than a couple of hours to process.

You can read my previous post here

In that instance, the state agency wants $180 before it will begin to proces our request (forgetting for a moment it waited 19 days to tell us that). Apparently, its the pattern we’re destined to see. In response to another request, the agency has told us we’ll need to cough up almost 300 bucks to account for the six or seven hours a state employee will spend complying with our request to look at records that, at least in theory, belong to the public.

If you remove the employment of the person asking for these records, it’s a 500 dollar hurdle placed in front of someone who has the audacity to ask a taxpayer supported agency to explain its decisions. To oversimplify this issue based on the worst-possible scenario of potential abuse is to slam the door in the countless other requests that are legitimate requests to monitor how tax dollars are used. It makes no sense to close off access to government because one request out of 100 is considered an outrageous fishing expedition that’s designed to harass someone in government.

Members of the Moscow City Council who want to say they’re just following along with the provisions allowed by state law are passing the buck and taking the lazy way out. The fees are used as a pothole in the road to open government designed to knock the tires off the public. The state law is too easily abused by government agencies and needs to be changed.