By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Public records should be just that – public. For that reason State Rep. Tim Brown, R-Bowling Green, co-sponsored a bill making public records more accessible for Ohioans.
Brown said he decided to co-sponsor Senate Bill 321 after hearing testimony from Ohioans who were blocked from getting public records by obstinate public officials.
“No one should need to hire a lawyer to get public records,” Brown said. “It can be time consuming and costly to resolve these matters.”
“We came up with a bill that works for people,” he said.
Ohio already has a simple method in place for making an initial public records request that is not burdensome to a citizen. However, if the office or agency denies access to those public records, the person requesting them is “often faced with an uphill battle consisting of attorney fees and court dates.”
Under Senate Bill 321, any person who believes that his or her public records request was improperly denied can file a challenge with the Court of Claims for $25 without the need to hire an attorney. The legislation also stipulates that the claim must be resolved within 45 days.
If the matter proceeds to court, and it is determined that the public office or official acted in bad faith, the court can award court fees to the citizen who filed the records request.
“Hopefully, it’s a step in the right direction,” Brown said.
Two years ago, the Ohio Newspaper Association, along with the Ohio Coalition for Open Government and the Ohio Association of Broadcasters, sent out journalists in all of the state’s 88 counties to see how cooperative governmental entities were at responding to public records requests.
The journalists were undercover, pretending to be citizens requesting records that should be available to them. Most of the offices in Bowling Green and Wood County did pretty well at responding, though some initially balked at the requests. Overall, Bowling Green and Wood County offices did much better than many areas of the state.
Senate Bill 321 takes public records requests one step further. The bill was vetted by the House Government Accountability and Oversight Committee, of which Brown serves as chairman. Brown said he is always a proponent of making government more transparent for all Ohioans.
“This bill creates a more public and consumer friendly process for hearing complaints of denial to a public record in Ohio,” he said in a press release about the bill. “A mediation process is created with the intent to resolve the matter within 45 days. The public’s access to the records of government should not require hiring a lawyer. Senate Bill 321 creates a more affordable and faster alternative to the current system which benefits all parties.”
The legislation does not remove any current remedies of resolving a public records dispute, rather it simply aims to create an additional, more expeditious and more affordable method.
The legislation now awaits Governor John Kasich’s signature before being enacted into law.
