Senate Bill 500, a school deregulation bill, includes language from last year's House Bill 1306 that would have addressed the appropriate fee for voluminous public records requests. It also addresses distribution of public records maintained in electronic form.
Hoosier State Press Association Executive Director Steve Key worked with House Speaker Brian Bosma to negotiate a reasonable response to the question of voluminous searches. It avoids hamstringing the public's ability to ask for records. If a search takes under two hours, there's no search fee. After that, though, the person making the request could be asked to pay $20 or the hourly rate of the person conducting the search, whichever is less.
The idea is to protect the public from exorbitant search fees while compensating the government for loss of productivity from the employee tasked with fulfilling that public records request. The federal government's Freedom of Information Act follows a similar approach.
Of course, a smart person will make more focused requests and not have to pay a search fee at all. Just ask for additional records as needed, based on the results obtained in earlier searches.
SB 500 also needs to clearly state that government workers must allow the person making the request, not the agency supplying the record, to determine in what form information stored electronically should be given.
If all public servants remembered they were hired to serve the public, this wouldn't be an issue. But some employees, whether irritated by a request or just wanting more revenue for their agency, don't follow that philosophy. Asked for an electronic record, they might quote a price for a printed version rather than simply giving an electronic copy.
What's the difference? Plenty! In electronic form, the data can be more easily sorted and analyzed. That's why it's in electronic form in the first place.
The General Assembly should require government agencies to let citizens choose the form in which to receive that data, whether on disc, flash drive, email or paper.
Remember, it's a public record — meaning it already belongs to the public. It's just a matter of conveniently delivering a copy.