From the Greensboro News and Record (1/2/09): The city could soon have a new, more user friendly way of issuing public documents.
In August, the Greensboro Neighborhood Congress asked the City Council to improve the speed, transparency and uniformity of the city’s response to requests for public records.
That task has fallen to Denise Turner, the new assistant city manager for communications, who hopes to develop a policy by February. A new system could include deadlines for responding to requests.
“I feel confident that Denise will make it happen,” said Donna Newton, adviser to the Neighborhood Congress.
North Carolina law says that records generated by or given to the city are the property of the people and should be readily available to residents. The law provides certain circumstances, such as criminal investigation information, when information can remain private.
Last summer, the Neighborhood Congress, a nonprofit consortium of community groups, asked the council to clean up the record request system.
The Neighborhood Congress asked the council to appoint a records ombudsman, set timelines for how long the city can take to respond to requests and provide for a hearing before the City Council if the city cannot produce records within 75 days.
Greensboro does not have a written policy on how to handle public records requests.
The city handles hundreds of simple questions from residents via its call center daily. It received more than 400 complex requests for information in 2008.
The city has faced complaints about the pace of some records inquiries.
Bloggers Sam Spagnola and Roch Smith sued the city last year after they did not get information they requested about the police department.
“The ones at our end that take the longest are the people who are looking for a history of an issue in documents,” said Pat Boswell, Greensboro’s director of public affairs.
The flow of public documents can get gummed up by requests that require work by other departments, such as information systems or the legal department.
“When it all got bogged down was when stuff got funneled through legal,” Smith said of his request. “Then, it not only got delayed, but it got obfuscated.”
A new system will likely include timetables for responding to information, Turner said. She hopes to have discussions with the city staff about what information is OK to release.
Smith said there have been times when he has received information quickly from city staff members.
“It isn’t entirely broken,” he said. “I would hope any policy that they set does not interfere with that.”
The city is also considering buying software that will allow it to search all city e-mails by keyword.
As for the congress’s request for a City Council appeals process, Turner said it may be more appropriate for her to hear objections to information denials or to help unclog the system if it’s taking a long time to get information.