A friend investigating the GOED/EB-5/Benda-gate offers the following price list for public-records requests from various state agencies:
| state agency | charge for fulfilling public-records request |
| SD Department of Transportation | $00.00 |
| SD Auditor | $00.00 |
| SD Department of Labor | $20.00 per hr. + copies |
| Northern State University | $20.00 per hr. + legal fees + copies |
| SD Board of Regents | $27.06 per hr. + legal fees + copies |
| SD Governor’s Office of Economic Development | $46.02 per hr. + copies |
I've previously reported the high cost the Governor's Office of Economic Development uses to keep us taxpayers from the documents we've already paid for. But the $46.02 memo hasn't circulated to every office. The state auditor and Department of Transportation appear willing to hand over the documents taxpayers already own at no charge. The Department of Labor thinks their time is worth not quite half of what the big kids in economic development get (there's a labor-vs.-management, proletariat vs. capital point to be made here).
Northern State University and the Board of Regents take an interesting legal position, charging requestors not just for searching and making copies, but for conducting a legal evaluation of whether the documents at hand are indeed public records. I smell something a little fishy here. Our public records statutes don't appear to authorize charging record requestors for the state's legal fees in determining whether records are public or not.
If I understand the law right, Party X can be required to pay Party Y's legal fees only if Party Y prevails in some court proceeding and it is found that Party X's claims were without merit. A request for public records may have merit. In this case, NSU or the Regents could choose to hand over those documents or to withhold them. If the requestor then appealed to the Office of Hearing Examiners (and later, the court), and if it was discovered that the public records request was improper, then maybe—maybe—NSU or the Regents could try to make the requestor pay for their lawyer bills.
But right now, NSU seems to be presuming that at least part of a public records request is without merit and that the requestor should have to pay for that error before a court has determined that the requestor has erred.
Public records law is supposed to be liberally constructed. Presuming a request guilty until proven innocent and requiring a requestor to pay for that proof doesn't sound very liberal to me.
So for now, if you're investigating records in South Dakota state government on the cheap, you'd better hope all the records you need are at the auditor's office and the DOT.
The inconsistent cost per agency is bothersome, the appearance is that the more the agency has to hide, the higher the cost.
Has there ever been a legal challenge to the cost of "Free"dom of Information?
This should be part of the legislative agenda, to make these cost equitable across the board.
The people in these agencies are already getting paid a salary, the costs for inquiries should be nothing more than the cost of copying, faxing, postage, etc.
This stinks. It blocks access to this information by people who don't have money. Is this somebody's bizarre concept of equal protection?
As an advocate for the Devil, Mr. Tsitrian, how would tax payers feel if somebody like Mr. H just bombarded DSU or the Labor Department with requests for goofy libby fishing expeditions and prevented the DSU people from doing what they do and the Labor people from laboring? If Mr. X asks one question and gets his stuff then that could still be free.
Thats the answer. Question 1 is free. Question 2 costs $.10. Question 3 costs $1. Question 4 costs $10. and so forth. That's a blogarithmic scale of fee charging for you.
This is just another layer in silence. The less the public knows, the better state government will be had. Have another egg roll.
Look for a federal handle and exploit it. DENR had a habit of hiding information. They also accepted federal money to administer EPA programs. Hiding info is a no-no under federal law, and they expect states getting federal money to administer federal programs to have procedures that parallel federal FOIA requirements. At one point I just kicked up a fuss with EPA, which then required SD DENR to stop the nonsense, or they would take over the program. Never had a problem after that.
Is that how you got fired and expatriated from the inner circles, Mr. Pay?
Good tactic, Donald! You'd think that if EB-5 is a federal program, then hokey smokes! all the records should be free to the public!
Grudz, your point is valid. Monkey-wrenchers could bombard public offices with frivolous records requests and keep them from getting any work done (sounds like the kind of thing Tea Partiers would do, not we liberals who want to keep government working!). We need some threshold to distinguish frivolous document requests... but we also need to recognize that part of every civil servant's job is to help the public find the records their offices generate. I'm not taking a university employee away from his "real work" by asking her to find me certain public records, and I shouldn't be financially penalized for asking her to do that work.
In most cases, though, I found state employees more than happy to provide information, even when the higher ups were trying to hide it. One agency might try to hide something, and you would go to another agency, and they would have it, or they would have something that referred to parts of it. It was a fun game, actually, to piece stuff together, and the more they would hide stuff, the more you knew what they had something big to hide.
The Janklow administration's attempt to hide their activities on the low-level radioactive waste dump was blown apart by state workers in two other states, who couldn't be threatened by Janklow. After that, there was just and incredible amount of leaking from SD state employees. There are lots of good state employees who make up for the few bad ones.
Donald Pay, wondering what your read would be on this one:
On September 26, 2013, I sent an email to Andy Lindboom, Senior Wildlife Biologist with Game, Fish & Parks and asked him if he could tell me how many sub adult mountain lions with functioning collars were available for harvest and how many were harvested during each hunting season from 2009 - 2013 (total of 10 numbers that I assumed would be readily available).
Six days later I received a response that reads in part: Sorry I haven’t responded yet, but your request needed to go through our legal department to make sure we comply with all statutory requirements. Per the South Dakota Open Records law (SDCL Chapter 1-27), the following records are not open to public inspection and copying:
1-27-1.5. Certain records not open to inspection and copying. The following records are not subject to §§ 1-27-1, 1-27-1.1, and 1-27-1.3:
(3) Trade secrets, the specific details of bona fide research, applied research, or scholarly or creative artistic projects being conducted at a school, postsecondary institution or laboratory funded in whole or in part by the state, and other proprietary or commercial information which if released would infringe intellectual property rights, give advantage to business competitors, or serve no material public purpose;
As I understand it, the mountain lion research in SD which has been ongoing since 1998 is funded by 80% Federal dollars and 20% state dollars...would FOIA requirements parallel the restrictive statutes noted in this email or would these state statutes qualify as a no-no?
MoronMore on Steve Bulle:http://interested-party.blogspot.com/2011/01/ecocide-underway-in-black-hills.html
Larry, mountain lion kittens eventually lose their spots - you, not so much...hope you feel better now.
Hardly:
http://interested-party.blogspot.com/2014/01/cougar-slaughter-could-allow-wolf-packs.html
Sorry Lar, as with any species, there are exceptions to the rule. Try to find a mountain lion in Idaho and Washington where the wolf roams.
"Rather than ramping up the legal kill, Wielgus prescribes limiting the take to the cougars’ natural rate of increase, around 14 percent annually. The state of Washington recently adopted such a policy. Given the widespread approval this strategy has received from wildlife biologists, it may set the standard for hunting of cougars—and perhaps other major predators—making it easier for them to coexist with people."
I would go along with that Lar, when we, both sides acknowledge a proper study on the true numbers if that is possible. I know that the lion hunt is now more of a true hunt than to just go out and shoot as it was, so the numbers must be closer to right than before. I still see lion and tracks with regularity. Balance Lar!
Balance would include darts and biobullets filled with contraceptives, Les. That USFWS turns its back on the extirpation of cougars from the region makes me want to sue somebody.
Out for an afternoon ride today Lead to Long Draw 40 miles and three whitetail does. Two weeks for deer tracks down to the creek, one set.
I would also add that in 2013 I requested arrest and prosecution data for ten years worth of drug arrests in SD from the UJS office at the Capitol. They handed me nearly 1000 pages of case data free of charge. I was so surprised, I even told them I would be happy to pay the cost of printing if they wanted, but they said it was their pleasure to provide the info. I was very pleased with how quick and accurate they responded to my request. If the courts can hand literately over 1000 pages of court info within 24 hours of requesting it, then there is no excuse why the Gov's office is charging $50+ per record.
I also complain about the outrageous cost to access the statewide voter file ($2,500) that's BS and I've compared it to most states. A lot of states provide it for free or a $2-300
Cheers to freedom of information!!!