Hoosiers still struggle to gain access to public records

The Indiana Coalition for Open Government tested public records compliance by various local agencies around the state during a six-week project that began in April. Vigo County was among the counties included in the access audit, as were our neighbors in Clay and Sullivan. The project by journalists at The Media School at Indiana University requested certain public records from health departments, commissioners and sheriffs’ departments — to be sent in an electronic format by email to the requesters.

The purpose of the project was to gauge if barriers still exist to the public obtaining documents in an electronic format.

“It’s an opportunity to meet the public where they are, and in this case, it’s on the Internet,” said Craig Lyons, a researcher on the project. Counties surveyed in the project, he explained, were randomly selected. They ranged from small, rural counties to large, urban areas and represented a cross-section of the state.

Lyons and his counterparts found that, in many cases, county leaders should review their websites with an eye toward how the site works for the public. In the case of many sheriffs’ offices, the public is asked to submit anonymous tips to help police solve local crimes.

Many of those same sheriffs’ websites, however, do not offer a daily crime log that the public can review to see if there is criminal activity — such as car break-ins, burglaries, thefts or assaults — happening in their own neighborhoods. Such logs are public record.

The timely — or in many cases untimely — response of the agencies also was documented in the project. According to state law, agencies that receive a records request have a seven-day window in which to acknowledge receiving the request. That’s the case even if the response is merely to say the requested record does not exist.

Project participants sought digital records concerning union contracts, food-borne illness complaints and 24-hour crime logs through Indiana’s Access to Public Records Act, passed in 1977. The access to public records law includes provisions for obtaining records electronically.

The project follows a statewide access audit performed in 1997 by a group of newspapers, including the Tribune-Star. That project looked at all 92 Indiana counties, where participants requested documents in person. Gaps were found in compliance, prompting some agencies to make changes in order to better comply with access law.

Since that 1997 test, the ability to request and access public information online has grown, with most Indiana households having access to a computer along with high-speed Internet.

Most county governments, including Vigo at www.vigocounty.in.gov — have an online presence. The Vigo site has links to numerous offices, including the county commissioners, health department and sheriff, the agencies selected for the latest access survey. They were chosen, in part, because they usually have an online presence; however, not all agencies keep the same records in the same way. Some records are still filed in paper form, but most can be scanned into a document center to be emailed.

The Coalition for Open Government report shows that none of the Vigo County offices responded to an initial email request for records, sent in April. After seven days, follow-up calls were made to each agency, but only the health department responded to that call, indicating no documents were available on reports by individuals of food-borne illness.

When contacted by the Tribune-Star about those results, all three county agencies voiced the concern that the request for records may not have been received by the appropriate person at the agency.

Sheriff Greg Ewing said his department has a long history of making a daily release of the 24-hour crime logs electronically to all individuals or agencies who have requested the information. A daily arrest and release log for the Vigo County Jail is also emailed each day, and the public has online access to look up inmate information for the jail.

Ewing said he didn’t recall receiving a request associated with the compliance audit, and since none of the sheriff’s department employees have an email listed on the department’s web page, it is unlikely that the request was received via email.

Dual responsibility

At the Vigo County Health Department, Administrator Joni Wise told the Tribune-Star that when she found out her agency was listed as noncompliant, she contacted the coalition with questions, including to what email address the request was sent.

“I think it is important for the media and public to know that certain government departments are structured differently,” Wise wrote in an email to the newspaper, noting that email addresses are listed online for health department staff. She pointed out, though, that a person making a request should make sure that the appropriate person is contacted within the agency.

Wise understands, though, that ensuring the integrity of open records is a shared duty.

“Government has a responsibility to make sure the information is there for individuals reaching out, so they can find the appropriate source within a department,” she said.

The results of her queries to the coalition were telling. Wise discovered that the records request had been sent to the email of the county health commissioner, who is not regularly in the office and did not check that email. A request to another staff member in the office would likely have received a response, she said.

In addition, the type of individual-reported food-borne illness documents requested by the audit does not exist in either electronic or paper form, Wise said. What does exist are health-provider reports submitted to the health department, documenting the food-borne illness.

An individual can call the health department directly to make a complaint about a food-borne illness, but that prompts a different procedure.

“When the complaints come in, we take down notes on what the caller’s symptoms were along with a three-day food history,” Travella Myers, environmental health supervisor for the health department, stated in an email. “If the symptoms correlate with a food-borne illness and a restaurant, we then go and do an inspection. There is no electronic file or paper file of complaints.”

State law mandates that food-borne illnesses must be reported by healthcare providers to the local health department. Those records usually arrive at the health department four to six weeks after the patient’s visit to the doctor. Wise said that if a restaurant is identified as a possible source of the illness, the health department staff will check to see when the last inspections were conducted of that restaurant, and a repeat inspection is likely.

Such health-provider records do contain patient information. If that personal data were to redacted so the complainant cannot be identified, Wise said she believes the document would be a public record that could be released. No such request, however, has ever been received.

“If it can be released, I have no issue doing so,” Wise said.

The public can find the results of monthly restaurant inspections — performed on a rotating basis and prompted by public complaints — on the health department’s web page and in the Tribune-Star.

Mandated response

As for the county commissioners, dozens of contracts are signed annually for a variety of services provided in Vigo County. However, the county does not contract with any union representing county workers.

Researcher Lyons said the project requested union contracts with the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, because it’s a broad organization that can cover a variety of public employee occupations.

Even though the commissioners do not have any union contracts, however, a response should have been made to the records request stating that fact, he said.

The same public records requests were made to public officials in Clay and Sullivan counties.

Only the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Department responded to the initial request within seven days, agreeing to provide the daily crime log and then doing so electronically, according to the audit report.

“We would honor any request, because I’m very familiar with the public records law, and we are open to the public,” Sheriff Clark Cottom told the Tribune-Star.

The department has a history of providing local media with arrest and crime reports, he said.

However, neither of the other two entities surveyed in Sullivan County, the commissioners or the health department, responded to the records requests. In fact, when reached in a follow-up phone call, Sullivan commissioners indicated that they do not have public email addresses, the audit showed.

In Clay County, no response was received from either the sheriff’s office or commissioners. The Clay County Health Department did respond within seven days, indicated the requested documents on food-borne illnesses did not exist.

Access pricetag

Indiana Public Access Counselor Luke Britt said public access law is intended to provide transparency to government actions. Records held by government agencies should be made available to the public, he said. The law does allow those agencies to charge a reasonable fee for copying documents.

Britt believes records obtained electronically should be free of charge, if they are already in a digital format. If the records need to be scanned before being sent, though, agencies can charge 10 cents per page, according to public access law.

A dollar per page can be charged for paper copies of records, which is what the Vigo County Clerk’s Office assesses when someone wants a copy of a divorce decree or custody ruling. Requesters often ask for those documents to be certified, so they must be duplicated on paper, resulting in the fee.

Individuals can ask to use a cell phone or other digital device to take their own snapshots of public documents, if no certification is needed. The discretion to do so, however, rests with individual agencies.