NV Legislators Looking To 'Clarify' Open Records Laws By Making Responses More Expensive, Easier To Deny

from the what-has-the-public-ever-done-for-us,-other-than-pay-for-our-EVERYTHING? dept

Open records laws are in place to force governments into public accountability. The word "force" isn't hyperbolic. There's plenty of evidence strongly suggesting most government entities are still very resistant to the idea. Lawsuits, public figures using personal email addresses, excessive fees, abuse of FOIA exemptions… all of these run contrary to the spirit of open records laws. Some run contrary to the letter.

Out in Nevada, legislators are crafting the "worst bill of the 2015 legislature" -- one that targets the state's open records laws specifically in hopes of further separating public officials from accountability.

Meet Senate Bill 28, which has its first hearing this afternoon before the Senate Government Affairs Committee. Brought on behalf of the Nevada League of Cities and Municipalities, SB28 attempts to make the release of public records so expensive that no one bothers asking for them.

Enter the Nevada League of Cities and Municipalities, which has been working for many months on a plan to spare its members from all those annoying records requests. Under Nevada’s public records law, governments can charge a fee if a request requires an “extraordinary use” of personnel or resources. So SB28 defines “extraordinary use” as a threshold that’s absurdly common...

Under the bill, “extraordinary use” of a government’s personnel or technological resources totals more than 30 minutes of work or “requires the governmental entity to produce or copy more than 25 pages of records or, for a request for a record to be delivered electronically, the equivalent amount of electronic data that, if printed using a type size not greater than 12 characters per inch, would produce more than 25 pages of records, to comply with the request.”

The world has shifted to digital, but governments cling to paper -- or "equivalents." This isn't some endearingly old-school trait, handed down by aged reps who have waged legislative wars for decades using nothing more than typewriters, fountain pens and dead trees. There's nothing quaint about it. It's simply a way to escalate fees while pretending to be "burdened" by the public's desire for transparency and accountability.

Agencies could charge 50 cents per page for documents as well as the cost for employees’ time to fill the request. An amendment offered by the Nevada League of Cities and Municipalities (NLCM) would reduce the cost per page to 25 cents for physical documents and charge the cost for any storage media used to fill requests electronically.

Either amount is ridiculous, considering most open records requests will be responded to digitally. (Even PACER's more "reasonable" $0.10/"page" charge for electronically-accessed documents… or search results… or search results that return nothing… is ridiculous. But it's still cheaper than many municipalities' per-page charges.)

Equally ridiculous is the proposal that any request taking "longer than 30 minutes" to fulfill be designated "extraordinary." This would push nearly every request into this category, making them subject to excessive fees or outright refusal. The same goes for the 25-page limit. Government employees are paid to fulfill these requests. It's part of their job, and they have no business claiming that fulfilling open records requests is an imposition and a hardship.

Very occasionally, outside help (usually of the legal counsel variety) will be needed, and government entities have every right to recoup fees paid. But they should err on the side of under-reimbursement, considering taxpayers have already paid for:

a) the generation of the records being sought
b) the wages of the person(s) fulfilling the request, and
c) the fees paid to outside consultants

Only the offset of direct costs can be justified (so as to keep agencies from carving holes in their own budgets). Everything else is prepaid. Per-page fees are nothing more than agencies skimming a bit more cash from the public's collective income.

In defense of this terrible bill, supporters cited "abusive" records requests, including a former government employee's "weekly records request," which is apparently being deployed as some sort of blackmail.

Brian MacAnallen, representing the City of Las Vegas, discussed two extraordinary requests. One required the city to review more than 2,500 emails. It took more than 250 hours to meet and resulted in 14,352 pages of documents being released. The city and the reporter who made the request scheduled a time to review the documents, but the reporter did not show up.

The other required the review of 7,434 emails of which 204 were determined to meet the request requirements. The review required 160 hours of employees’ time. Senior-level employees, including the city attorney, were required to review the documents before release.

A representative of the City of Henderson mentioned that his city was forced to complete weekly requests made by a disgruntled former employee. The former employee told city officials these requests would continue unless the city paid the former employee a sum of money.

In every case but the last, there are existing legal remedies in place. Excessively large requests can be handled either by charging the requester for reasonable expenses or by asking him or her to narrow the scope. This is common practice everywhere, and Nevada is no exception. The only change this bill would make is that it would allow normal requests for small amounts of documents to be refused for passing the 30-minute time limit and make larger requests (for a few hundred pages) prohibitively expensive.

As for the latter -- while tricky to navigate without further damaging open records laws -- the city could certainly gather documentation concerning the employee's stated motive and run it by the judicial branch for possible remedies. The danger, of course, is that any remedies may allow government entities to deny requests based solely on perceived motive. (This, too, has been part of the government's FOIA abuse. The FBI and other agencies have denied documents to certain prolific FOIA requesters solely on the theory that the requesters are seeking to trick agencies into releasing exempt information by sending multiple, overlapping requests for the same subject matter.)

Government agencies -- funded and sustained by tax dollars -- shouldn't be a worse deal for citizens than a trip to the local copy shop. And these agencies certainly shouldn't aspire to Domino's Pizza levels of bureaucratic opacity. "Thirty minutes or it's DENIED!" isn't exactly a slogan that inspires confidence in these agencies' trustworthiness.

Filed Under: expensive, journalism, nevada, open records, transparency

DailyDirt: Cupcakes With a Twist

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

An amazing number of cupcake stores have been popping up everywhere over the last few years, in what's been called the "Cupcake Bubble". (Just check out CRMB on NASDAQ for one public company dedicated to cupcake bakeries -- or the reality show about cupcakes, Cupcake Wars.) These tasty treats are not only easy to make cheaply, but scaling up also doesn't require too much effort. As a result, there are tons of different cupcake choices out there, and stores are distinguishing themselves by offering cupcakes with a twist. Here are just a few examples.

• How about an ATM that takes your cash and dispenses cupcakes? Sprinkles, the "pioneer" of cupcake bakeries, has set up a 24-Hour Sprinkles cupcake ATM that is restocked day and night with a variety of freshly baked cupcakes. The machine also dispenses cupcake mixes, apparel, and... cupcakes for dogs(!) [url]
• The world's most expensive cupcake -- The Golden Phoenix -- costs over $1,000. The cupcake is made by Bloomsbury's Cupcakes in Dubai, and it's made from the finest chocolate and covered in 23 carats of edible gold sheets. [url]
• The Meatloaf Bakery in Chicago sells savory meat cupcakes. Each cupcake is a self-contained meal, and there are eight different varieties. For example, the "Wing and a Prayer Loaf" features ground chicken and celery topped with hot wing sauce and a blue cheese crust. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: bakery, cupcake wars, cupcakes, dispensers, expensive, food, meat
Companies: crmb, sprinkles

DailyDirt: I'll Gladly Pay You Tuesday...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Lots of people seem to have an unhealthy obsession with hamburgers. So much so, that they're willing to pay incredible sums of cash for a single meal that includes cooked ground meat between two pieces of bread. Spending hundreds -- or thousands -- of dollars on a burger might not sound like a very happy meal to everyone, but there are more than a few places willing to serve up some expensive burgers for paying customers. Here are just a few examples.

• The first burger grown in a lab probably won't taste all that good, but it'll cost about $330,000 to create a synthetic hamburger from cow stem cells. The first lab-grown burger should be ready to eat sometime in October, and the project is being funded by an anonymous donor. [url]
• If you hit the jackpot in Vegas, there's a ton of ways to spend too much money on food out there -- and one option is a $5,000 burger at Fleur de Lys. In addition to Kobe beef, foie gras and truffles, you'll also get some wine and the bragging rights. [url]
• The Guinness Book of World Records named 'Le Burger Extravagant' from Serendipity 3 in NYC as the world's most expensive burger, priced at $295. Apparently, the folks at Guinness have never been to Vegas (or they abide by the "stays in Vegas" rule very strictly), but they also seem to have missed the $666 Douche Burger sold out of a food truck in NYC, too. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: burgers, expensive, food, guinness, world record

DailyDirt: Expensive Meals

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

A nice meal is a nice meal, regardless of the price. But if you want to show off your considerable fortunes, try serving up a few of these ingredients in your next culinary creation. (Maybe if you're a newly-minted billionaire, recently married... and have a penchant for killing your own food?)

• If you like really expensive vegetables, forget white asparagus, hop shoots are where it's at. But unless they're specially cultivated, the shoots will turn green and become tough and rope-like. [url]
• European white truffles go for thousands of dollars per pound, found by trained dogs (not pigs who will sometimes eat the fungus). Time to start cultivating these in a lab -- or at least a quick DNA test to confirm the species... [url]
• About 150 flowers are needed to produce one gram of saffron -- and a lot of human labor. Fortunately, it doesn't take a lot to impart its flavor into foods, but avoid the fake stuff and don't buy ground saffron. [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: asparagus, expensive, food, fungus, hop shoots, meals, saffron, truffles

It's Good To Be A Monopoly: Rogers Prices iPhone Service At 2 Arms And 2 Legs

from the what-else-are-you-gonna-do? dept

There's been a fair amount of complaining about the pricing of the new iPhone 3G over the last few weeks. While plenty of people were initially enamored by the cheaper price for the actual phone in the US (and in some other countries), this subsidized low price often hid higher service fees (with a locked contract) that came with it. However, it appears that the folks at Rogers Communication up in Canada really went overboard in its service pricing: offering very expensive service fees that have excessively limited data amounts (and no unlimited data offering). Users also get less talk time. Basically, these service plans make the iPhone a hell of a lot less appealing -- but since Rogers is the only carrier offering the iPhone in Canada, it feels it can get away with such high prices. But, the impressive thing is that people are trying to fight back, putting together a petition against Rogers' decision. While online petitions are notorious for their ineffectiveness, this one seems to be getting an awful lot of attention -- creating a ton of negative publicity for Rogers. If the company has any sense of the harm negative publicity can do, perhaps it will rethink its pricing strategy.

Filed Under: canada, expensive, iphone, service
Companies: apple, rogers communications