PUBLIC RECORDS LAW Just the facts

Unconditional and prompt access was denied about half the time in the audit.
By RANDY LUDLOW
COLUMBUS DISPATCH
COLUMBUS -- Public records allow Ohioans to make educated decisions in many ways every day about their lifestyles, pocketbooks and government.
A Cincinnati family searching for its first house visits the county auditor's Web site to research selling prices in a neighborhood.
A taxpayer drops by the school treasurer's office in Cleveland to obtain district spending figures to determine his vote on a proposed tax levy on the ballot.
A mother visits the sheriff's office or goes online to see if any new sex offenders have moved near her children's Columbus school.
When caretakers of public records strive to be open and provide easy access, they can make a difference in Ohioans' lives while allowing the governed to keep check on elected officials and public employees.
But when gatekeepers unreasonably or unlawfully delay and deny such records, the intention of Ohio's public-records law is obscured.
In a statewide public-records audit sponsored by the Ohio Coalition for Open Government in April, unconditional and prompt access to routine records was denied nearly half of the time. More than 90 press representatives conducted the audit in Ohio's 88 counties by asking for records from police, schools, city or village hall and county commissioners.
The coalition was established by the Ohio Newspaper Association, a trade organization that represents 83 daily and 163 weekly newspapers.
What ex-justice said
Andy Douglas, who championed open government as an Ohio Supreme Court justice from 1985 through 2002, fears both public officials and courts are lessening in their resolve to honor the public-records law.
"Obviously, life and death are subjects of the utmost importance. In my judgment, access to public records is a close second," Douglas said. "Because when government operates in the closet without the sun shining in, bad things tend to happen."
Ohioans increasingly have found government reluctant to provide access to records.
Louie Bauer discovered the Rossford Police Department in suburban Toledo contributed $100 to a candidate for mayor last year, so he asked City Hall for records detailing police spending.
He received information disclosing the political contribution came from what he derided as a $9,000 "slush fund" of donated money. He unsuccesssfully waited more than two months for detailed records.
The former four-term Rossford mayor wrote his own legal brief and went to the 6th District Ohio Court of Appeals seeking a mandate for the records, which city officials soon delivered.
"City officials need to understand and respect the law. There is no penalty for a public official who does not uphold the public records law. It then becomes a game," Bauer said.
Some have gone to court and won attorneys' fees -- the only potential penalty for violating the law -- while battling for records.
A woman in the Morrow County town of Cardington won an Ohio Supreme Court ruling requiring the central Ohio village council to keep and release full minutes of meetings that were little more than shorthand sentences.
How law helped
In the Athens County town of Chauncey, a village council member received an Ohio Supreme Court ruling ordering the police chief to release police log books, time sheets and a report on a theft at her home.
Some Ohioans are astonished by how their records requests are greeted and treated.
Russell Stephan, a Westerville resident and computer programmer at Ohio State University, has been fighting for weeks to obtain complete records on a Gahanna Police Department officer he encountered in the Columbus suburb.
Stephan is on the verge of writing his own court complaint to demand the records, including an internal affairs investigation underlying a lawsuit against the city and citizen complaints against the officer.
"The Public Records Act is one powerful law," he says. "But, they're still fighting me. The people in charge of enforcing the law don't seem to think it applies to them."
Kristen Treadway, Gahanna's director of human resources, said the city is not thwarting Stephan's records request but needs time for legal research and to remove information that can be legally withheld.
Stephan had not received the records as of early June.
"They always have a new excuse. They never seem to run out of them," he said.
Ultimately, public records can allow Ohioans to monitor what goes on in their back yards.
When life stinks
Robert and Rosella Bear did not require public records to document what their senses told them. The stench and flies born of the manure from the millions of hens at the neighboring Buckeye Egg megafarm were overpowering.
But the Mount Victory couple still sorted through thousands of pages of records at the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Ohio Department of Agriculture to detect violations and determine if state regulators were performing their jobs.
"It was pretty important," said Bear, 68. "It gave us background information and allowed us to monitor things. We gave a lot of the information to our lawyer."
Dozens of neighbors of the Mount Victory farm in Hardin County earlier this year won an undisclosed amount of damages from former Buckeye Egg owner Anton Pohlman in the settlement of a lawsuit.
The couple said the public records law functioned well as officials promptly responded to their requests.
"We, the people, are the government. We should have access to our records," Bear said.