Randolph County Prosecuting Attorney Michael Parker presents and discusses the legalities of the new Freedom of Information Act policy with the Randolph County Commission Thursday.
ELKINS, W.Va. — The Randolph County Commission discussed a plan for all public bodies that receive Freedom of Information Act requests to establish and maintain a uniform county wide fee to reimburse the county for material expenses.
During a work session with county elected officials and department heads, Prosecuting Attorney Michael Parker discussed the legalities regarding the new Freedom of Information Act policy that the state has recently enacted.
“As of January 1, 2016, a law that was passed during the 2015 legislative session requires the Secretary of State’s office to set up a database to have information about the Freedom of Information Act requests made to governmental agencies,” Parker said. “The information that has to be submitted is the date that the request was received, the name of the entity or the person that made the request, the subject of the request, whether the request was granted or denied, if it was denied the reason for the denial, the date the request was completed and the amount that was charged for the request.”
State code section 29b-1-3e states “the public body may establish fees reasonably calculated to reimburse it for its actual cost for the reproduction of records. A public body may not charge a search a retrieval fee or otherwise seek reimbursement based on a man hour basis as a part of costs associated with making reproduction of records,” Parker explained.
“So basically the fees have to be reasonable and they have to be reasonably calculated to reimburse the county for its expense,” he continued. “One of the problems you may get into if you don’t have uniform amount of fees is if somebody comes to my office and I’m charging them $50 a page for a copy fee and somebody goes to (County Clerk) Brenda (Wiseman)’s office and she charges them 50 cents, then I think it gives credence to the fact that maybe I’m not being reasonable in what I’m charging to copy the documents.”
In anticipation of the meeting and the possibility that the County Commission would establish one centralized person to enter submissions to the Secretary of State’s database, Parker created a Randolph County FOIA request notification form with an attached list of provisionary statutes that describe state code exemptions that may be sited in the event of a denial.
“If the records exist in an electronic format, they may request it in an electronic format,” Parker said. “If (the information) doesn’t, you have no duty to scan it and send it in that form. So you can run a copy and submit it to them in that form and charge them whatever fee is associated with it.”
“The most significant penalties are for not responding to (a FOIA request) or unreasonably denying a request that should have been granted,” Parker explained. “In fact, West Virginia code section 29b-1-6 states that if you willfully violate the provisions of FOIA, you’re guilty of a misdemeanor and can be fined not less than $200 and no more than $1,000 and imprisoned in the county jail for not more than 20 days.”
The County Commission then approved a motion to establish the Commission office as the repository for the necessary form for submission to the Secretary of State. They also decided the designated representative handling submissions will be Donna Haddix, who will then send the required information to the Secretary of State’s office no later than the 10th of each month.
Phyllis Yokum was named as the secondary representative in the event that Haddix is unable to complete the submission. The second part of the motion states if the FOIA request is questionable, it will be brought to the Prosecuting Attorney’s office for further review.
The County Commission also set a date and time – Jan. 21, just prior to the regularly scheduled Commission meeting – to meet with elected officials and department heads with the purpose of coming to an agreement regarding the fee rates per format requested. Rates will then be established during the next Commission meeting…
