this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
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The issue there is redaction. A form may have sensitive information that we're not legally allowed to release, so we have to redact information. I'm not talking about classified info, but things like driver's license numbers or or medical information.
It's often stuff we tell people not to give us, but when they do it still requires redaction from a PIR. It's one of the primary reasons they're such a pain in the ass - we have to manually review every page for 30 different kinds of protected info.
We can't let a third-party just sift through that data, because we don't have the right to share that information with them.
Can I bitch about that redaction for a bit? Someone hit our car while it was parked on federal property. There were cameras, and the security people figured out who did it (and called them, and they denied it). When we finally got the police report, all of the information for identifying the guilty party had been redacted, along with the officer's name and any other useful information. For a literal fender bender. Shitty driver got away with it. The police report was completely useless. I can only imagine my insurance company was like, "We waited 3 weeks for THIS?" They might as well have sent over a blank page.
I get the idea behind redacting stuff in general, but that one just pissed me off.
It's frustrating for me too, but state law requires us to redact certain things on a PIR even when we think it's stupid.
I have to redact homeowner information even though it's available through the appraisal district. That means I have to manually check for homeowner names on every page of every document, even though another agency has it labeled on the map. It adds hours and accomplishes nothing.
But it's state law, so I have to follow it.
Right, so what about the second option, paying for someone to handle the data?
With a total staff of 11 I'm guessing there's not a huge budget for outside contractors to do the work.
If it came down to it the remedy is to challenge it in court. An impartial judge should be able to look at the argument from the local government and determine if their argument is legitimate or not.
I'm not talking about the city budget, I'm saying the person requesting documents could pay for the labor needed to get the documents.
A third party can't view the un-redacted documents because the city can't share them.
Right, hence the payment. With the payment, the city could hire someone to free up time for someone to handle and redact the documents. Or pay someone overtime. Or however else the city thinks is reasonable. So instead of saying "no", offer a labor price.
The State only allows us to charge $15/hour for staff time for PIRs, so we can't just hire someone or ask an employee to work an extra 20 hours a week for a year to pull some documents the requestor won't even read.
The thing is lots of these ludicrous requests are made by right-wing lobbyists who try to make us spend 80 grand on a pointless request so they can point out how the city is wasting money. They create problems so they can get the state to remove our ability to make local Ordinances.
For legitimate requests, we go out of our way to meet them. I've spent a lot of time digging through paper files from the 1920s to help citizens.
But most of our requests are either automated bullshit from realtors looking for cheap land, insurance companies looking for who to advertise to, contractors looking for work, lobbyists looking to stir up shit, or, oddly enough, lawn service companies.
For those requests, we do what's legally required and not a damn thing more.
That makes sense, but there should always be a way to get information from a government, even if it's expensive. Governments work for the people, so everything should have a process.
I'm sure someone would be willing to pay hundreds of thousands to get the footage in the OP, and saying "no, is it's too hard" isn't acceptable.
That's why it's important to hire professional city staff. For requeats that are important or reasonable, we find a way to do it. And even with the one from my example, my first reaction wasn't "No," but for me to clarify why the request was so difficult and for me to suggest how they might revise their request in a manner that would both be easier to provide, but also would provide more useful information.
I keep incredibly detailed records, which is why we've won every court case that's come up since I took over these duties. So I know how to search the data and parse out what is actually useful.