We spend a lot of time talking about public records in our office. If that’s a new topic to you, you’ll find it worth your time to become familiar. State law enacted in 1985 requires that most publicly funded entities make their records available to the public for inspection or copying. That’s an important piece of government transparency; those records belong to the public and they help keep our elected officials accountable. Although news organizations request documents regularly in the course of their research and reporting, there are no special privileges. Anything available to a journalist is also available to you. There are some problems with the law. At nearly 40 years old, there is no provision for emailing records, but there are stipulations about faxing them. The only deadline an agency has is to respond to be prompt and reasonable, which is undefined. And the only remedy for noncompliance is to file a lawsuit or persuade your local district attorney to file a misdemeanor charge against his fellow government employee who works across the hall. Some agencies are very, very good about keeping the public’s business public. Others are not. In the past year, Oklahoma Watch has filed three lawsuits to force agencies to comply with the Open Records Act. Two were successful and one, against the Tulsa Police Department, remains open.
KFOR got their knickers in a twist rather publicly this week, calling out the State Department of Education for failing to respond to a records request made 100 days prior, after praising the Office of the Attorney General for clearing all pending records requests.
Oklahoma Watch has been waiting for records from the OSDE as well. We’re also waiting for records from the Oklahoma City Police Department, the Department of Human Services, the Office of Management Enterprise Services, the Tulsa Police Department, the Cleveland County Jail and a plethora of others. Reporter Jennifer Palmer has been waiting for the University of Oklahoma to fulfill one request for 11 months.
Jennifer and I will be talking about public records on this week’s Long Story Short podcast, so listen in if the topic piques your interest.
The thing worth thinking about is that public records are, well, public. They’re paid for by taxpayers, maintained at taxpayer expense, and can reveal what our taxpayer-paid government officials are doing with the taxpayer money entrusted to them.
The Open Records Act didn’t create special access for journalists. It created a way for you to know what your government is doing in your name.
As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in 1913 for Harper’s Weekly, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”
