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Student Journalists Sue Community College For Ridiculously High Fees On Open Records Request
from the avoiding-open-records dept
With various open records and freedom of information laws, many government organizations don't like the fact that they may have to reveal things that can be seen as embarrassing. Sometimes they try to get around this simply by refusing to disclose things they're legally obliged to, but that can backfire. So a sneakier way of hiding is to simply claim that the "cost" associated with retrieving the requested information is quite high. Most open records laws allow the agency to pass on any reasonable costs (and usually there are ways to get exemptions from those fees).
However, it appears that the student journalists at Johnson County Community College in Kansas were pretty shocked when the university told the student paper that it would cost $24,130.72 to provide staff emails and documents requested by the students. In a related issue, a request was made for all emails between two individuals over a seven month period... and the college responded that it would cost $47,426 to fulfill the request. After thinking that seemed crazy, the journalists resubmitted the request, but asked for just the emails between those two individuals for a single day, chosen at random, along with a list of all the open records requests the school had received... and was told that request would cost $23,630.96. So, then the journalists sent another request dropping the open records list, and just choosing a single day (one day after the one in the previous request) and was told to get just those emails it would cost $9,745.96... even though the total number of emails was around 20.
The school claims that it would cost that much because they'd have to spend $5,250 to contract with an outside agency for 25 hours of work to get the emails. The students (along with the Student Press Law Center) believe that it's really about a college simply putting forth bogus fees to avoid having to comply with open records requests. Thus, they're now suing the college for failing to obey the Kansas Open Records Act, which requires only reasonable fees to retrieve the information requested.
However, it appears that the student journalists at Johnson County Community College in Kansas were pretty shocked when the university told the student paper that it would cost $24,130.72 to provide staff emails and documents requested by the students. In a related issue, a request was made for all emails between two individuals over a seven month period... and the college responded that it would cost $47,426 to fulfill the request. After thinking that seemed crazy, the journalists resubmitted the request, but asked for just the emails between those two individuals for a single day, chosen at random, along with a list of all the open records requests the school had received... and was told that request would cost $23,630.96. So, then the journalists sent another request dropping the open records list, and just choosing a single day (one day after the one in the previous request) and was told to get just those emails it would cost $9,745.96... even though the total number of emails was around 20.
The school claims that it would cost that much because they'd have to spend $5,250 to contract with an outside agency for 25 hours of work to get the emails. The students (along with the Student Press Law Center) believe that it's really about a college simply putting forth bogus fees to avoid having to comply with open records requests. Thus, they're now suing the college for failing to obey the Kansas Open Records Act, which requires only reasonable fees to retrieve the information requested.
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The school claims that it would cost that much because they'd have to spend $5,250 to contract with an outside agency for 25 hours of work to get the emails.
$210 per hour? Seriously? For standard email admin duties?
That's over 5 times what I make per hour in information security at a major bank.
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That is on the high end, I wonder if it is partly includes coverage liability insurance or incase the people decide to sue the consultants as well.
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Hire me!
Look, if the administrators are this stupid, how good is this college anyway??
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Re: Yogi #2 - Hire me!
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Your average user can log in, sort by sender, and dump the emails to a file in less than a minute. IT should be able to do it at least just as fast, and for anyone on the network.
I hope the students win this one...
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2. Type in username and password
3. Search by date/name/whatever.
4. Copy and paste/print off emails at around 20c per b/w page.
If we take that 20c and do 47,426 divided by 0.2
we get a grand total of 237,130 pages!
Yep, some of the college professors and faculty MUST have hundreds of thousands of pages of emails in their inbox, in order for this to make sense.
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5 x 474.26 = $2,371.30. Huh...way short of the original forty seven thousand dollars.
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So I am guessing there are some deep dark secrets at this school, and releasing these records would be the tip of the iceberg.
Yep there can not be anything bad in there... *blink*
They need an outside firm to access their backup tapes, is this standard in the industry now?
You would think that someone would have written some software for public institutions that uses all of the technology we have now to facilitate records requests to make sure they are always easily available. But then that goes against the idea of people in power being responsible.
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Suit
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Just ridiculous
Oh, and it didn't cost us a penny for paper or printer consumables, we delivered the emails on a DVD. Thousand's of dollars to perform this request? Yeah right, I WISH I made that much money. I wouldn't have to work any more.
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Reasonable fees are in the eye of the beholder (or in this case, the beholden[?]). Just ask the RIAA. It knows all about "reasonable fees" for infringement.
(Maybe the RIAA is the "outside agency" the school is communicating with...)
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That kind of logic is, to quote the trolls, freetarded. When you try and tie every wrongdoing back to that of the most gross offenders, you earn every bit of hyperbole that is returned.
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This is how I'm comparing them: both are exorbitantly high, approaching "unrealistic," if not completely surpassing it.
x unrealistic fee = x unrealistic fee
I'll break it down even further: both the school and the RIAA think the word "reasonable" means "an incredibly large amount."
That's how I'm doing that.
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This
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except one is a fee and one is a judgement. The RIAA is demanding "fees for downloading" that contention only fuels the opposition.
"x Settlement offer" in no way equals "x unrealistic required fee"
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The extremely high valuation by the RIAA companies of their products is similar to the extremely high valuation by the college of its IT services. They're both high and unreasonable.
It doesn't matter why they think they deserve to receive that much money - the comparison still stands because the absurd valuation is what is being compared.
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Johnson County Community College
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Re: Johnson County Community College
a) mo'money; or
b) give students the Blues.
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BOFH...
Are you listening, Simon?
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records requests can be pretty expensive
The other expensive part for a school, is that you will probably have to pay someone to review every possible record for student names and so on to redact out all the information that cannot be shared legally. It does sound like their prices are a bit steep, but they are not insanely over-board.
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Re: records requests can be pretty expensive
-So popping in a backup tape costs thousands of dollars now?
"The other expensive part for a school, is that you will probably have to pay someone to review every possible record for student names and so on to redact out all the information that cannot be shared legally. It does sound like their prices are a bit steep, but they are not insanely over-board."
Reread the article
"just choosing a single day (one day after the one in the previous request) and was told to get just those emails it would cost $9,745.96... even though the total number of emails was around 20."
How can it cost almost 10 grand just to get at 20 emails? Even if you factor in your redaction costs...that's still far too steep.
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Re: records requests can be pretty expensive
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