Truth Bomb #4: City of Salem charges me $117 to get a one page email

Long-time observers of what goes on in Salem, Oregon's city government tell me that the current crop of officials at City Hall are the most secretive, closed-door'ish, and dismissive of citizen involvement they've ever seen.

I believe them.

I could give lots of reasons from my own experience. Here's a single shocking story that recently happened to me.

After I made a public records request for documents City officials are required to share with the public, I was charged $117 for one brief email message that came close to what I had requested, but wasn't really what I was looking for.

I'll explain the further outrageousness of how the City of Salem handled my public records request.

First, the hourly cost of the three people who handled my request ranged from $81 to $110 an hour. But what I asked for wasn't complicated. It involved a motion by a city councilor to initiate changes to the downtown parking policies.

“Documents (including emails) relating to the 7-part motion made by Councilor Clem at the August 25 City Council meeting that directs staff to prepare and present an ordinance amending SRC Chapter 102. I’m particularly interested in documents relating to item (2) of the motion regarding removing restrictions on the State St. lot.”

I assumed that a mid-level staffer of some sort would attend to my request. But when I got this message from someone in the Recorder's Office, I was blown away by the hourly staff rates.

Mr. Hines, the deposit amount required to fulfill your request is $116.90. This includes:

$ 20.16        .25 hrs review time by the Assistant City Attorney at $80.64/hr
   41.50        .50 hrs staff time @ $82.99/hr
   55.24        .50 hrs staff time @ $110.47/hr
$116.90        Total

I asked this person to let me know who was getting paid $82.99 and $110.47 an hour to respond to a citizen's simple public records request. Here's the answer I got.

Mr. Hines, the staff involved in your request are Linda Norris, City Manager, burden rate $110.47/hr, and Kacey Duncan, Deputy City Manager, burden rate $82.99/hr.

Are you freaking kidding me!?, I thought. This is like President Obama and Vice-President Biden personally dealing with a federal FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request.

Why are the City Manager and Deputy City Manager handling my request to get documents relating to a city councilor's motion? Don't they have better things to do, like managing an enterprise with a half billion dollar annual budget?

Yesterday the Associated Press ran a story, "Ferguson demands high fees to turn over city files."

Officials in Ferguson, Missouri, are charging nearly 10 times the cost of some of their own employees' salaries before they will agree to turn over files under public records laws about the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

In one case, it billed The Associated Press $135 an hour — for nearly a day's work — merely to retrieve a handful of email accounts since the shooting. That fee compares with an entry-level, hourly salary of $13.90 in the city clerk's office, and it didn't include costs to review the emails or release them. The AP has not paid for the search because it has yet to negotiate the cost.

Well, I was charged $97 an hour to retrieve some documents — less than Ferguson, but still way too high. As the AP story goes on to say:

Price-gouging for government files is one way that local, state and federal agencies have responded to requests for potentially embarrassing information they may not want released. Open records laws are designed to give the public access to government records at little or no cost, and have historically exposed waste, wrongdoing and corruption.

I thought this was an exorbitant hourly rate, but gave the Recorder's Office a check for $116.90 anyway. Why? Because I'm a crazy citizen activist. And my birthday was coming up. (I've got a thing for public records requests.)

When I got a PDF file containing a bunch of documents, at first glance I was pleased. But upon closer inspection, I realized that the City Manager and Deputy City Manager hadn't given me what I asked for. I wrote back to the person in the Recorder's Office I'd been dealing with.

Thanks for sending this batch of documents. However, all but one weren’t what I asked for, so the PDF file isn’t responsive to my public records request. Which was…

After reviewing them, I’m quite sure all but one of the documents/emails I received had to do with a motion Clem made at the August 11 meeting, directing staff to prepare a report on downtown parking for the August 25 meeting. This is interesting stuff, but not what I requested.

Since there were considerable emails regarding Clem’s August 11 motion, seemingly there should be emails and/or other documents relating to Clem’s 7-part August 25 motion. Yet I wasn’t given any directly relating to the 7-part motion. One email from Councilor Bennett indirectly referred to the motion.

Having been informed who was handling my request, I’ve cc’d them on this message. I look forward to either receiving documents responsive to my public records request, or getting confirmation that no such addiitonal records exist. In that case, naturally I’d like to get a substantial refund on what I paid for the request, since so far only one email has been sent to me that pertains to this request.

Thanks. — Brian HInes

Soon I got an email from the City Attorney.

Mr. Hines:

The records previously provided are all the city public records responsive to your request. As to your statement that the records provided are not responsive, we disagree. The August 11, 2014 Council motion and August 25, 2014 staff report are related to the August 25, 2014 motion referenced in your request.

Your request broadly sought documents "related" to the August 25, 2014 motion. Outside of stating that you were "particularly interested" in "item (2)" of the motion, your request did not contain any other limitation. Without any clarification from the person making a records request, city staff must provide the records as requested.

In the future, you may want to provide additional clarification in your written request so to limit the amount of staff time and documents provided.

Daniel B. Atchison
City Attorney
City of Salem

This was, in my opinion, complete bullshit. I told the City Attorney just that. But using nicer words.

Dan, I disagree that public records about the August 11 motion are “related” to the August 25 motion. If I’d wanted records about the August 11 motion I would have asked for them. Nothing in the records I got about the August 11 motion relate to the August 25 motion.

The August 11 motion concerned a staff report about the downtown parking situation. The August 25 motion was a specific 7-part motion about changes to the city ordinances governing downtown parking.

How much more specific could I have been? I asked for documents related to the August 25 motion. Except for one email, you gave me documents related to the August 11 motion.

Why didn’t you give me documents related to the formation of Salem, or the first city government in this town? Trace the connections back, and everything is related to everything else.

Lastly, I gave the PDF file to someone else interested in this subject before I’d had time to read the documents. I figured that they were responsive to my request. When I saw this person at a meeting, he told me “There’s nothing relevant there. Aside from one email, all the documents are about the August 11 motion.”

This shows that an independent third party agreed with me that the documents you gave me weren’t about what I requested.

I’m still requesting a refund. — Brian

This episode is depressingly typical of how City of Salem officlals fail to understand what the term "public servant" means.

Whenever they have a choice between representing the broad public interest and supporting open government, or representing special interests and keeping governmental deliberations secretive, almost always they choose the latter.

A citizen shouldn't be charged $117 to get one email that isn't really even what his public records request asked for. The highest paid officials in Salem city government shouldn't be responding to public records requests. When a citizen says "You didn't give me what I asked for," he shouldn't get a dismissive reply by the City Attorney.

There's a lot more to say about how the City of Salem is failing to abide by both the spirit and the letter of Oregon's public records law. But I'll save that for another Truth Bomb.