Online public records access a mixed bag

MOSES LAKE - Living in a digital age has its benefits.

The internet puts the information a user wants virtually at their fingertips. People have immediate access to scores from the latest game, the stock market and the news, among a myriad of other information available on the web.

But what about public records? Can the average citizen pull up minutes from the latest city council meeting just as easily as they could their local weather?

The answer to that question, unfortunately, depends, said Toby Nixon, president of the Washington Coalition for Open Government. While federal and state agencies often provide access to digital records on their websites, Nixon said smaller local agencies might not offer that convenience.

"There's no broad law requiring agencies to post public records on their websites," he said. In fact, the only thing agencies are required to do is make the name and contact information of their public records officer available, he said. However, Nixon said that law doesn't even specify that the agency has to post that information on its website.

Because of the way the law reads, he said, agencies can either post that information at their place of business, their website or in any agency publications.

"Any one of those will satisfy that law, but this is information an agency should be happy to make available as many ways as possible," said Nixon. Nixon said while some strides have been made in improving online access of public records and information, more can definitely be done.

"In the last few years, the legislature started requiring things to be posted online," he said. "But they're requiring this of state agencies that they know have a website."

However, legislators are reluctant to impose similar requirements on smaller agencies, he said.

"It's quite a different problem to require local agencies to post things on websites because a lot of them don't have websites," said Nixon.

He said there are about 2,700 municipalities in the state, including cities, counties, school districts, courts and fire districts.

"The smallest of the small often don't have any website," he said. "And even some of the larger ones have a website but they don't have anyone on staff to regularly update it."

The legislature last year passed a law requiring agencies to post notices of special meetings online, he said. But that also only applies to agencies who have websites and who also have somebody on staff whose job it is to update that website, said Nixon.

Although the law doesn't require local agencies to post public records and information on their websites, Nixon said it's a practice smaller agencies that do have websites should consider adopting.

"People are mostly interested in what big government agencies do, but sometimes we need to keep track of what the little fire district or mosquito control district is doing as well," he said.

Nixon also said he has noticed that interest in digital access to public records is slowly increasing. Access of public records at the state's archives for example, show that shift to digital access, he said. In 2012, paper records were accessed about half a million times, said Nixon. However, electronic records were accessed more than 5 million times, he said.

"That's already 10 times as many requests for electronic records than paper ones," he said. "And I only see that continuing to expand."

Nixon said local and state agencies should make note of that trend and consider making more public records available online.

"We definitely encourage agencies to proactively post records they think people would be interested in and not require them to make public records requests for them," he said. Nixon said some government leaders are also beginning to see the benefit of proactively making public records readily accessible for citizens in digital format.

During her term, former governor Christine Gregoire passed an executive order encouraging agencies to proactively make as much information available for citizens to access online as they could, he said. However, Nixon said agencies don't necessarily have to make every public record available online because that could end up costing the agency money and manpower.

Since records often contain information agencies are prohibited from sharing or information not covered under the public records act, someone at the agency has to review most records, he said.

"If an agency expends that much effort and resources proactively doing that for records that nobody is even interested in, then that's a lot of wasted effort," said Nixon. "But there are records agencies absolutely know there's a lot of interest in and they should certainly post those proactively."

He said agencies can also make it easier for people to access records online by posting records that have already been requested. If the work has already been done once to prepare a record for public release, an agency can simply post that information on its website, said Nixon.

"Future public records requests for that document can then be easily handled by an agency, since all they would have to do is send the person a link to where it is on their website instead of re-producing the record," he said.

While no law requires agencies to post public records online, Nixon said agencies should still consider proactively posting information online to improve transparency.

Basin agencies online

The City of Moses Lake's website provides information on how a citizen can make a public records request and provides request forms online. The city's website also provides access to minutes and agendas for the city council as well as the planning, parks and recreation, tourism and airport commissions. Minutes from city council meetings as far back as 2010 are available on the website. Other meeting minutes go back to last year.

The entire Moses Lake Municipal Code is also available on the website.

Grant County's website also has information on making public records requests. Contact information for the county's public records officer is also available, along with a public records request form that can be downloaded.

The county's website also has links to pages for elected offices and other departments, some of which have separate portals for searching public records. The county's website links to an archive of previous regular and special election results as far back as 2007, for example.

The City of Ephrata's web page also includes how citizens can obtain a public record. A few interlocal agreements are also available on the site, including the solid waste management plan between the city and Grant County.

Links to agendas and minutes for city council, parks and recreation and planning commission meetings are also available on the website.

The site also provides the city's municipal code.

The City of Soap Lake also provides citizens with a downloadable public records request form on its website.

When city council meetings are held can be found on the website, however agendas for the upcoming meetings are not currently available. The site's tab on meeting minutes is under construction.