Requesting copies of public records
From Sunshine Review
Contents |
- Please see:Sunshine Review:Legal disclaimer
This article is dedicated to assisting an individual in submitting a records request. We provide a number of general outlines as well as state specific requirements for requesting records.
[edit] Procedures
The first areas you will want to think about are:
[edit] Do I need an attorney to help me?
There is no state in which you are required to seek the assistance of an attorney in order to file an open records request. Many regular citizens file open records requests routinely and successfully without ever consulting an attorney. In addition to the information provided here and our analysis of the various state sunshine laws, there are a number of other resources on the web for individuals who wish to submit an open records request on their own. The Student Press Law Center makes available a delightfully useful tool called the Fully Automated, Fill-in-the-Blanks State Open Records Law Request Letter Generator that allows anyone to fill out a few blanks and generate a professional letter that cites the correct law in the state where you'll be requesting information. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press also provides an easy-to-understand but thorough explanation of each state's open records laws in their Open Government Guide.
For many open records, you do not need an attorney. (However, see our Legal Disclaimer).
That said, here are some reasons why you might want to hire an attorney to assist you with your open records request:
- You believe that the agency will take your request more seriously if it comes from an attorney. Regrettably, state FOIA audits have tended to show that government agencies respond less well to average citizens than they do to professionals who file open records requests.
- You can afford to hire an attorney and doing so will save you time and hassle.
- You believe there's a significant chance that the agency will deny your request for a reason you regard as frivolous or incorrect, and you are prepared to (and can afford to) contest any denials by pursuing all available legal remedies.
[edit] What person or agency receives my request?
Since this Wiki is about open records requests at the state and local level, our first assumption is that you're looking for documents that relate to a state or local agency.
You might want information from:
- a public school district
- a county government
- a city government
- a police department or law enforcement agency
- the executive branch or other state agencies (such as your state's Governor, the Department of Transportation or the Department of Tourism or any other state agency that has its own name, budget and offices)
[edit] How should I send my request?
You have a number of choices about how to deliver your request. You can:
- Send it by regular first-class mail.
- Send it by certified mail.
- Send it by fax.
- Send it by email.
- Deliver it in person.
If you believe that the agency from whom you plan to request records might later deny ever getting your request, your two safest bets are to deliver it in person or send it by certified mail. But, both of those options take a lot of your time and energy. Unless there's some pressing reason why you must be able to definitively establish that the agency received the request, it's easier to:
- Send it by regular first-class mail.
Or, if you can obtain the email address for the records custodian,
- Send it by email.
These options are quick and inexpensive. If the agency doesn't acknowledge your request or give you the documents you've requested by the deadline mandated in your state's laws, you can always call the agency and ask what happened. If they deny ever receiving the request, at that time you can re-file using a filing format that allows you to record that the request was received.
[edit] How broad or narrow should the request be?
The main question to think about here is how broad or narrow your request should be. Should you ask just for paper records or just for electronic documents (copies of emails and other electronically received and archived documents such as faxes)?
What period of time should your request cover? Consider:
- all school district budgets for the last twenty years
- Mr. Snicket's outgoing and incoming emails for March 26-27, 2005
- any emails sent or received by the members of the city council in December 2006 about the proposed Gladstone annexation
What subjects should your request cover?
- if you're asking for email records, do you want to specify that the search be conducted for specific, named search terms or do you want the agency to search for those search terms "and related search terms" or search terms "pertaining to" the named subjects?
- "While the request should be broad enough to encompass all records that you seek, a request without reasonable subject matter and/or time limitations may be denied as overly broad. Excessively broad requests can also lead to substantial charges for locating and copying records." Godfrey & Kahn, S.C.
- The above was written specifically in terms of Wisconsin law, but the idea is applicable everywhere. You want your request(s) to be specific enough that people know what you're talking about, but not so specific that a records custodian might not include applicable items just because you only asked for one document.
- Note that if your request can be construed as overly broad either in the search terms you specify or in the period of time you specify, it may be denied or delayed on those grounds. Alternatively, the broadness of your request may result in a demand for exorbitant fees.
Experienced guidance from others who have gone through this can be of great help at this stage. Please email us or contact us at [wwww.lburnsinstitute.org our website]. We are working with FOIAers in many states and can probably connect you with someone in your state who can help.
[edit] What's the best way to describe what I'm looking for?
Our suggestions:
- Take a look at the templates section for some ideas or add your own.
- Consult the Open Records letter generator generously provided by the Student Press Law Center. We use it all the time because it gives you the legal language for the state in question, and includes a response time based on the laws of the state in which you're filing your request.
- You still have to figure out what words to use to describe the documents you want, and that's not always easy.
Here are some hypothetical examples.
Let's say you wonder if your public school district sends its administrators on expense-account-paid trips to conferences. However, you don't know the names of any such conferences and you don't know which administrators might be reimbursed to attend. Here, you could frame your request as:
- "I'd like copies of the administrative staff's expense account reimbursement requests for attending conferences and workshops in 2007. By 'administrative staff', I mean the superintendent and other administrative personnel."
You could also ask for copies of any conference brochures or descriptions for conferences attended by administrative personnel (although these might not be available)
Let's say you wonder if your city used a competitive bidding process when it entered into a contract for the new carpet in the mayor's office. Here, you could frame your request as:
- "I'd like copies of any bid documents, requests for proposals, and executed contracts pertaining to the new carpeting installed in the Mayor's office or or around July 2006".
If the answer to your request is, "We couldn't find any documents matching your request", you could consider a second request as follows:
- "I'd like copies of any emails sent by or received by anyone in the Mayor's office in the three-month period from May-July 2006 pertaining to the Ultradeluxe Carpet Company."
[edit] What form do I want the documents in and where should they send them?
The basic options are:
- Fax
- Paper copy
- Some form of electronic storage, such as a CD-ROM or an electronic file sent as an email attachment
In your letter asking for the documents, we suggest that you provide the agency with more than one way of filling the request. Example:
- "If you'd prefer to email me the documents, my email address is ____________________. If you'd prefer to mail me paper copies of the document, my address is _______."
Legally, most states do not have to give you a document in a different form than the form in which they maintain it. For example, if a school district has a copy of school board meeting minutes from August 1998 on paper stashed away in a file drawer, they are under no obligation to scan that into a computer file and send it to you as an email attachment or through the mail on a CD-ROM. Or, if the only form in which the document exists is electronically, they are not generally not required to make a paper copy and mail that to you if they decide they'd rather forward the email to your email address.
As with other complex areas of open records requests, we urge you to ask us if you are unsure about how to proceed.
