| The
Cost of Information May Go Up in Herndon |
| The Herndon Town Council this week discussed enacting an
official policy to deal with requests for information under
the Freedom of Information Act. If the council approves the
proposal next week, the new policy could lead to higher fees
for people and organizations requesting information, because
charges for staff time could be added to charges for copying
and preparing the information. |
| Anytime I hear that a government is charging people for
information they should have free access to without question,
it makes me nervous. But the charges the Town Council is considering
this week are nothing more than what is allowed by the state
law, and nothing more than what other jurisdictions charge,
although other jurisdictions do assign fees on a case-by-case
basis. |
| I would hope that the town would limit the application of
extra fees to those requests that require a substantial amount
of staff time. If all a staff member has to do to answer a
request for information is to grab a file and walk over to
the copy machine, I would hope the town could avoid charging
the requester for 15 minutes of staff time. |
| The town is considering the new fees because it says it
has more requests for information under the Freedom of Information
Act than ever before and it's spending a lot of staff time
to respond to them. |
| It seems like the better course of action is to ask why
people are so unsatisfied with the level of information they
are getting out of their town government that they feel they
must file requests for information to find out what their
elected officials are up to with their tax dollars. |
