From the Idaho Mountain Express
by Andy Kerstetter
In response to a lawsuit filed by a group of citizens in June, a judge has ordered the Blaine County School District to contact Verizon about providing Superintendent GwenCarol Holmes’ cell phone records and to come up with a lower fee for processing a public records request.
The suit came about after a Jan. 27 public records request filed by Pamela Plowman, a member of the group Coalition for BCSD Accountability. Plowman requested to see all email correspondence between Blaine County Prosecuting Attorney Jim Thomas and the district’s administrators, trustees and the board’s attorney between Jan. 27 and Nov. 24, 2015. The request indicated that Plowman wanted to receive the correspondence via email.
The coalition has said the communications pertain to its investigations into the alleged illegal recording of a meeting at the School District last fall between citizens and district officials. The meeting was investigated by law enforcement but no charges were filed.
The district indicated there are 704 emails included in the request, and it estimated the total fees for the request at $3,210, including $1,080 for its director of technology to extract, organize, process and print all the emails at a rate of $45 per hour for an estimated 24 hours of work. It also included $2,100 for Assistant Superintendent John Blackman to review the emails and redact them for personal and confidential information at a rate of $60 per hour for an estimated 35 hours of work and $30.20 for printing after the first 100 pages.
By Idaho statute, the district can charge a fee for all public records requests that will take staff more than two hours to prepare, as well as requests that exceed 100 produced pages. However, the statute also specifies that the organization processing the request must use the lowest-paid qualified staff member to do the work.
During a hearing in Blaine County 5th District Court on Tuesday, Judge Robert Elgee ordered the district to recalculate the costs of the request by finding the lowest-paid person who could do the work, saying that Blackman—the second-highest paid district employee—need not perform all the work. However, he did affirm the district’s right to assess fees for lengthy records requests and for requiring payment up front.
“I think you need to determine a cost to assimilate and print those 704 emails and I think any secretary can do that,” Elgee said, adding that the district would also need to identify the lowest-paid person who could review the emails to redact any information not subject to public records laws, like student information or private personnel information.
“I don’t see why a secretary couldn’t do that, either,” Elgee said.
Cell phone records
The issue of Holmes’ cell phone records came up in a Dec. 16, 2015, records request by Plowman to see the cell phone records of Holmes, Blackman and Communications Director Heather Crocker dating from Oct. 1, 2015, to Dec. 16, 2015.
The district supplied detailed cell phone records for Blackman and Crocker, including a list of each call made, but provided only a summary page for Holmes. The coalition said in a written statement that district Business Manager Mike Chatterton told them the district didn’t possess detailed records for Holmes, but claimed that Verizon confirmed that detailed calling records for Holmes exist and are available online.
At the hearing Tuesday, Elgee ordered the district to inquire with Verizon about getting the records for Holmes’ cell phone, something that John Ashby, the attorney representing the district, argued the district was not obligated to do because the records had not come directly into the district’s hands.
Elgee said he “wouldn’t bite” for that argument.
“They’ve got to open that link to the Verizon account for Ms. Holmes’ phone and see what’s there,” Elgee said. “You can’t block a public records request by blocking that flow of information to you.”
In a written statement, the coalition wrote that they were happy about Elgee’s rulings in their favor but were disappointed that the district didn’t release those public records in the first place, arguing that obstruction of access to public records indicates greater underlying problems with the organization.
“Denial of, or resistance to, such access is not only a problem in and of itself, but also a catalyst for even deeper public concern,” the coalition wrote.
The lawsuit came on the heels of approval by the district’s board of trustees of its 2016-17 budget, which contained cuts that coalition members had protested, arguing that too much money was being diverted from student needs.
Holmes pointed out in comments to the Idaho Mountain Express that the district had fielded an unprecedented number of 96 public records requests over the past year—84 of which were filed by the coalition—and had responded to all of them, taking up at least 168 hours of paid staff time. She also noted that the coalition had not yet offered any payment for the records requests in question.
“This represents a large number of hours of staff time ensuring that the public has access to every public record that falls within the scope of Idaho law,” she said.
The lawsuit is now on hold, pending resolution of the judge’s orders in the Tuesday hearing.
From the Idaho Mountain Express