Libby considering additional fees for public records

Public access to government records may soon come with a price tag.

The Libby City Council will be considering a resolution at their next public meeting, a resolution that would create a fee schedule for copies and searches of public records.

The resolution, as yet un-numbered, was sent by city administrator Jim Hammons to members of the City Council on Jan. 14. It was sent to Hammons with a note from Mayor Roll on the same day, “Will put on next agenda. Please send to council.”

The resolution would require a fee of $0.15 per page for copies of public documents, as well as an hourly rate of $16.75 for city staff time spent researching the records, billed in half-hour increments after the first 15 minutes, which are free.

The resolution also stipulates “For a variety of reasons, including privacy and confidentiality, some searches for public records cannot be made by the public and must be conducted by authorized staff members, and the requesting party will be charged for this time.”

Those fees could be even higher, should the city decide to hire an outside service or contractor to conduct the search. “If the City decides to hire an outside service or contractor to comply with the request, the requesting party will be charged the actual cost of responding to the request plus any City labor per this resolution.”

Libby isn’t the first municipal government to charge a fee for access to public documents. Montana Code Annotated sections 2-6-110 and 7-1-4144 allow government entities to collect “reasonable” fees for searching and making copies of public documents.

The resolution was drafted by Doney Crowley P.C., the city’s new law firm, after a verbal request from Mayor Roll to Allan Payne.

City Councilman Allen Olsen questioned the need for such a resolution, saying no discussions had taken place at council meetings regarding excessive time spent responding to city records requests.

Requests to City Clerk/Treasurer Glena Hooks for copies of meeting minutes went unanswered as of Monday. The most recent minutes posted on the city’s website are from May 27, 2014. No mention of the resolution nor of the time spent processing document requests has been made at City Council breakfast meetings in recent weeks and minutes of those meetings are not kept.

Another potential issue with the proposed resolution is the inclusion of a required form.