With regard to HB646, “An Act allowing public bodies or agencies to charge for the costs of retrieval of public records under the right-to-know law,” the question before the General court should be this: does this bill improve the presumed right of equal access by taxpayers to public documents?
The Answer is no. HB646 would make public information, which is already difficult enough to pry from the claws of public bodies and agencies–regardless of any current or future fee schedule, more of a luxury item.
HB 646 awards Law-firms, well-funded non-profits, corporate interests, political parties and upper income individuals with a de facto monopoly on public information and by extension the transparency that information affords.
We see this already with voter checklists. They are more often than not a luxury item. In some cases you need to pay out hundreds of dollars to obtain these public records. HB646 takes this problem and makes it worse by creating a means to price taxpayers out of being able to access public documents that only exist because they were taxed to fund the government that created them.
Yes, there are costs associated with responding to requests for public documents, but charging people for them is the wrong way to approach the problem. It discriminates against people who lack the disposable income to pursue transparency. It limits the ability of everyone to participate, and to keep tabs on their own government; a situation that should have progressives and their non-profit water-carriers apoplectic.
But there is no “Stop the Document Intimation”. No municipal anti-bullying campaign. There are no tweets of Facebook updates with Pictures of dour-looking Democrats, “H8” stenciled on their cheeks, as they pimp for the right of all taxpayers, regardless of income level, to access public documents. Why the hell not?
The only possible explanation for such “tolerance” is the institutional effort to hide things from the public. To make information inaccessible to all but the elites and the political class.
HB 646 helps that monopoly along.
The solution for taxpayers and public bodies, if you are actually looking for one, is not to make documents less accessible. It is to invest in solutions that will make public documents more accessible at increasingly less cost over time.
The legislature, public bodies and agencies should confer on ways to make (at the very least) the most commonly requested public documents publicly accessible at no cost, without exception.
The legislature, public bodies and agencies should find ways to eliminate the middle man, the clerk or functionary whose precious taxpayer funded time might be consumed by the search and dissemination of public information.
The legislature, public bodies and agencies should make anything and everything that is already scanned or in digital format accessible at the click of a mouse or a tap on a smartphone or tablet.
Towns, cities, and agencies should not be asking for permission to establish bribery by statute. They should be sharing solutions that maximize accessibility not begging for the right to turn clerks into the security guards of a gated country club community accessible only to people with enough Benjamins.
Elected officials exist to protect the rights and interests of their constituents, not to put a price-tag on the things most likley to ensure those rights and interests are not misused.
