PUBLIC INFORMATION

Sometimes a ton of work produces only a tiny result. A coalition of colleges, newspapers (this one included), television stations and various other groups recently conducted a statewide survey of compliance with Maine’s Freedom of Access Act among municipal, school and law-enforcement offices and found … well, nothing conclusive except that in especially smaller communities some police and school departments aren’t as in sync with the public’s right to know as they should be.

An oversized postcard outlining the public’s right to government documents and mailed to all police stations and school superintendent offices should clear up the problem. The Maine Freedom of Information Coalition no doubt could handle it well.

The coalition has hit on an important topic. Holding government officials accountable by making their documents available for public inspection is crucial. When malfeasance has occurred, often the only way of finding out is through demanding officials produce their records and correspondence. And as the coalition points out, on the federal level, only 5 percent of FOI requests are made by journalists – “which means the general public seeks to employ public access laws far more frequently than does the working press.” General public isn’t the right term, however; “lawyers and lobbyists” more accurately captures the heaviest users of the law, two groups that are easily capable of telling elected officials which documents they must offer up, not, of course, that they should have to.

In the Maine survey, discussed in depth beginning yesterday on Page One, public documents were requested at 75 police departments (the surveyor asked for the most recent police log), 156 town offices (the most recent expense sheet for the highest-elected official) and 79 school offices (the contract for the superintendent). The compliance rates were the following: for school offices, 67 percent; for police, 65 percent; for the highest elected municipal officials, hard to say. Nearly half the towns did not have expense reports; only 18 percent of town offices had the reports on file.

It should be noted as well that no office was actually out of compliance – the courts often don’t consider a document denied until an office has four or five days to produce it.

As explained in the news stories, the people taking part in the survey showed up at the offices without identifying themselves and asked for the documents. Technically, there is no reason to give a name or even to be friendly when demanding public records. Practically, that is not a wise course of action, and it was not surprising to find the police in particular asking questions before turning over documents or stalling on turning them over at all. A more accurate way to determine compliance might be to survey those who requested information in their regular course of business and figure the response rates from there.

Certainly, there are some serious issues with the information act in Maine. Most importantly is that it can be entirely circumvented through meetings and phone calls that are never announced but that can be where the real decisions are made. And lawmakers seem to take particular glee in creating exemptions to the act. There are more than 100 statutes blocking public access now covering ballots after elections, workers’ comp board minutes, child-support payment records, parole board recommendations sent to the governor and the location of ginseng plantings. Members of the public should recognize that the ease with which legislators hide documents eventually will affect them and, in any event, makes waste, fraud and abuse that much easier to perpetrate.

Those concerned with the condition of the act are supporting two bills – one to create a legislative study committee on the issue and one that would be useful by requiring police to have policies on complying with the FOIA. Most large departments already have such policies; the smaller ones may be able to copy and follow these without difficulty.