March 7, 1994; City of Rosemount
3/7/1994 10:14:43 AM
This is an opinion of the Commissioner of Administration issued pursuant to section 13.072 of Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 13 - the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. It is based on the facts and information available to the Commissioner as described below.
Facts and Procedural History:On February 14, 1994, the Commissioner of Administration received a letter from Mr. Larry Walsh, a resident of Rosemount, Minnesota. In this letter, Mr. Walsh described attempts by him to gain access to data maintained by the City of Rosemount and to get answers to certain questions from the City. The City of Rosemount, hereinafter Rosemount or the city, operates a system whereby citizens can fill out a Rosemount Community Card for the purposes of either making comments on city services or requesting information from the city. Mr. Walsh explained that he had used these cards on a number of occasions to request information from Rosemount and that he had received no reply or response to his requests from the city.Mr. Walsh provided copies of the requests he had made. On November 11, 1993, he submitted a list of questions about city activities which included questions about how the city classifies certain data it maintains. On November 14, 1993, he submitted two lists of questions. On December 29, 1993, he submitted an additional question about city activities, including a question about who within Rosemount functions as the city's responsible authority for purposes of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. In his December 29 request, Mr. Walsh also made specific requests for copies of various documents that he believed were maintained by the city. On January 12, 1994, Mr. Walsh submitted a request that was a mixture of questions and specific requests for documents maintained by the city. On January 27, 1994, after consulting with the Department of Administration's Public Information Policy Analysis Division (PIPA), Mr. Walsh wrote a letter to Rosemount asking the city to send him documents that would identify the city's responsible authority and any procedures that the city has established to provide access to government data. Mr. Walsh stated that none of these requests had been responded to by Rosemount. In response to Mr. Walsh's request, PIPA, on behalf of the Commissioner of Administration, wrote to Mr. Ron Wasmund, Rosemount's interim city administrator. The purposes of this letter, dated February 17, 1994, were to inform Mr. Wasmund of Mr. Walsh's request for an opinion, to ask Mr. Wasmund or the city's attorney to provide any information or support for Rosemount's position and to inform him of the date by which the Commissioner was required to issue this opinion. On March 3, via facsimile transmission, PIPA received a response by Mr. J. Michael Miles, the attorney for Rosemount. Mr. Miles stated that the Rosemount City Council had met to consider PIPA's letter and the questions asked by Mr. Walsh. Following the council's discussion, the members asked Mr. Miles to respond to PIPA's letter. In his response, Mr. Miles made comments that are summarized as follows. Mr. Miles asked that the Commissioner note that many of Mr. Walsh's questions have . . . nothing to do with the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. Mr. Miles cited an example from one of the comment cards submitted by Mr. Walsh. Mr. Miles noted that of the 103 questions asked by Mr. Walsh, it was Rosemount's position that only about 25 percent of those questions had any relationship to government data as that term is defined in the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act (MGDPA). Mr. Miles also asked that the Commissioner take into account the fact that Rosemount is a small community with finite and limited resources. Given those limitations, requests such as Mr. Walsh's take considerable time to respond. (Mr. Miles also noted that Mr. Walsh had submitted 35 additional requests on February 11, 1994.) Mr. Miles went on to describe the city's future intentions regarding Mr. Walsh's inquiries. The city administrator will meet with Mr. Walsh to answer as many questions as possible and to discuss Mr. Walsh's options for receiving data from the city. According to Mr. Miles, Mr. Walsh's requests for copies involve over 1,000 pages of materials so Mr. Walsh will be advised that he may prefer to inspect the documents at no cost instead of paying for the receipt of copies. In closing, Mr. Miles stated assurances that Rosemount has and will continue to be responsive to requests from persons requesting information from the city. He also asked that the Commissioner take into account his comments as well as the nature and tenor of Mr. Walsh's inquiries.
Issue:
In its letter to Rosemount, PIPA summarized the issues raised by Mr. Walsh in his request for an opinion as follows:
Discussion:
Except for his January 27, 1994 letter, Mr. Walsh asked questions of the city and requested documents by filling out a Citizen Comment Card provided by Rosemount to its citizens. The card provides information about the city's concern for providing quality service to its customers and includes instructions on how to fill out the form and submit it to the city. A portion of the card, labeled Request for Information , provides blank space to be filled in by the citizen which is preceded by the statement: I would like a city representative to contact me about the following service or concern. In making his initial requests, Mr. Walsh filled in this blank space with a comment that essentially said: please answer the questions I am submitting on an attachment. Starting with the comment card he submitted on December 12, 1993, Mr. Walsh, in the space provided, in addition to asking questions, asked to be provided with copies of the public data he described on his attachments. Rosemount did not dispute Mr. Walsh's statement that he received no responses to his submission of comment cards that contained both questions and requests for government data.
Rosemount is correct in stating that general questions directed to a city or other state or local government entity in this state do not implicate the requirements of the MGDPA. An illustration is helpful. If a citizen calls a representative of a city council and asks why the city council took a certain action at its most recent meeting, the question that is asked is not a request for access to data under the MGDPA. However, if the same citizen calls the representative of the city council and asks for access to government data that explains a certain action taken by the city council, this request is a request for access to government data and those provisions of the MGDPA that provide the public with the right to access government data will be implicated. In this instance, Mr. Walsh has asked a number of specific questions about operations of Rosemount but he has also asked to receive copies of various items of government data that are or may be maintained by the city. Minnesota Statutes Section 13.03, subdivisions 1 through 3 provide the basic guidance for state and local government entities such as Rosemount to follow when a citizen requests to either inspect government data or to receive copies of government data. In summary, those provisions state a presumption that all government data is presumed to be public, require government entities to establish procedures to insure that requests for government data are received and complied with in an appropriate and prompt manner and deal with a variety of other issues associated with public access to government data. Rosemount did not provide the Commissioner with a description of the actual policies and procedures it has put into effect in order to insure that the city is in compliance with the public access provisions of the MGDPA. Whatever those procedures may be, it does not appear in Mr. Walsh's case that the requirements of the MGDPA were met. Mr. Walsh did, using the city's own Citizen Comment Card system, ask lots of questions of Rosemount. The MGDPA does not impose direct obligations on Rosemount, except in very limited instances where a citizen asks to have government data explained, to answer questions from citizens about the operation of the city. (See Minnesota Statutes Section 13.03, subdivision 3.) However, Mr. Walsh also asked, using the vehicle of the Citizen Comment Card, for copies of various documents that he believed to be maintained by the city. It does not appear that anyone at Rosemount ever told him that there were other procedures he ought to be following to make requests for government data held by the city. Mr. Walsh was provided with an official city document, the Citizen Comment Card, that, among other things, told him he could request information. In the comment cards he presented to Rosemount on December 29, 1993, and January 12, 1994, he made at least 13 requests that are clearly requests for copies of government data. In his January 26, 1994, letter, he not only asked for copies of documents but he also asked the city to provide him with a copy of the procedures adopted by the city for accessing government data. Development and implementation of public access procedures have been required of the City of Rosemount, as part of the MGDPA, since January 1, 1980. (See Minnesota Session Laws 1979, Chapter 328.) In response to his requests that clearly fall within the MGDPA requirements, Mr. Walsh did not receive, and still has not received, the data he has requested. The MGDPA requires that the responsible authority in a city establish procedures to insure that requests for government data are received and complied with in an . . . appropriate and prompt manner . The MGDPA requires that citizens be provided with copies of public government data upon the request of the citizen. (See Minnesota Statutes Section 13.02 subdivisions 2 and 3.) It is not an appropriate response to a citizen's request for copies of government data for Rosemount to not respond at all. It is not a prompt response to a citizen's request for copies of government data to provide no response whatsoever until that citizen seeks an opinion from the Commissioner. Rosemount has not met its obligations to provide Mr. Walsh with copies of government data upon his request when it would not acknowledge that it had even received his request. It is conceivable that Rosemount has not responded to Mr. Walsh's requests because he is asking for copies of government data that are classified as not public. However, an examination of his requests do not reveal any request that appears to ask for data that is classified as not public. Even if he requested not public data, Rosemount is required to respond to his request in an appropriate and prompt manner by informing him that the city could not provide copies of the data because it is classified as not public. Rosemount has not made any response like that to Mr. Walsh's requests. The Commissioner agrees with Rosemount that many of Mr. Walsh's questions are not requests for data within the meaning of the MGDPA. The Commissioner is aware of the work that is imposed on a city of the size of Rosemount by the requirements of the MGDPA. In the past the Department of Administration has worked with the League of Minnesota Cities and similar organizations to develop uniform compliance procedures to reduce the burden of the MGDPA on government agencies. However, this work is for naught if a government agency does not, if it has not developed its own procedures, choose to adopt and implement model procedures so that it can be in compliance with the public access and other requirements set out in the MGDPA by the legislature. The Commissioner recognizes that the city is moving forward to deal with Mr. Walsh's requests and recommends that the city use this particular experience to review its policies and procedures for compliance with the MGDPA and for providing city personnel with the training necessary to insure compliance. Opinion:Based on the correspondence in this matter, my opinions on the issues raised by Mr. Walsh are as follows:
Signed:
Debra Rae Anderson
Dated: March 7, 1994
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