There’s a story from December 2nd at the Janesville Gazette that describes how hard it can be to receive adequate government compliance with a public records request.
Wisconsin law has clear provisions requiring local government to supply requested records promptly following a request, even including an anonymous request. (WPRL Wis. Stat. ss. 19.31-19.39)
The story involves four requests (!) of Rock County officials before the newspaper received documents related to the resignation of the county’s human resources director.
See, After four requests, Gazette gets open records.
I am convinced there’s no reasonable, arguable claim against providing the records at the first instance.
Why does, then, delay like this happen? There are a few possibilities, as indication of political and municipal arrogance or incompetence (although in the Rock County story, I’d guess arrogance is the far greater likelihood).
A few general remarks, about no place in particular:
First, public officials are often self-interested. They may be quick and loud in declarations that they represent an entire community, but their actions reflect little more than their own self-interest. They may even dupe themselves into believing that that’s good for them is good for the while community. They see themselves as indispensable rather than (properly) instrumental.
One sees this self-interest in how a politician or bureaucrat will interpret a law. He will often interpret government’s authority broadly, but a citizen’s rights against government intrusion only narrowly.
Many bureaucrats know little of legal and political requirements on them, but a great deal about restrictions on citizens.
Second, though, there’s a desire of officials to ape the no-holds-barred approach they feel that private parties often take in litigation. That kind of private approach is often exaggerated, but more significantly, it’s impermissible for a public entity.
Truly, impermissible: for example, the ethical requirements on a prosecutor are more stringent and encompassing than those on private defense counsel. Why? Because the private attorney has an obligation only to defend truthfully his client; the prosecutor has an obligation to do justice in the name of an entire community, including deciding whether he should, in fact, decide to begin a prosecution. The prosecutor has the power of the state or county behind him, and all legal power conferred within America is conferred for limited and defined ends.
City or county officials sometimes decide that they can obstruct and argue at every turn, using the full power of the city or county, against a private party. They may feel it’s how the game is played, so to speak.
Too funny and galling, both. When the bureaucrat wants authority, he contends that he embodies principle, truth, etc. When he denies a private party its rights under the law, then it’s just a game, and the citizen should buck up and stop whining.
Those officials who operate in a no-holds-barred mode seldom help themselves or their communities. Anyone who thinks that way is often a mediocrity who cannot assess an argument properly, and winds up omitting more than he should, at embarrassment only to himself and his community. Gaps or delays are telling.
Third, how many cities or counties bother to explain to employees what constitutes a public record so that all potential record holders might be aware of their obligations?
How many distribute an actual public records request to those public employees who might be affected when it arrives? Rather than simply explain that a request arrived, how many cities and counties show employees what’s being asked in the original, to make certain the greatest level of compliance?
How many conceal the full request from employees, and simply summarize what one bureaucrat might consider the range of the request?
Employees of a city or county may be denied the chance to see the original request that is, after all, a binding on all those working in the city.
How many employees of cities or counties do more than search a few electronic databases or a local network for email, even though records under the Wisconsin Public Records Law implicate far more than just a few emails?
When a city or county conducts a search though electronic records, do they search broadly based on the topic of the request (as they should), or do they merely search based on a few keywords?
(Officials within a municipality might conduct discussion of a topic or person using a name other than the real name or expected terms, to avoid thereby the discovery of documents using a simple word search.)
The Public Records Law may be circumvented erroneously or wrongly for any number of reasons, in any number of ways. Until there is full and complete compliance, uniformly and routinely, officials would do well to put aside the self-interested description of their work as ‘public service.’