This is an opinion of the Commissioner of Administration issued under Minnesota Statutes, section 13.072 (2024). It is based on the facts and information available to the Commissioner as described below.

Facts and Procedural History:

Charles Laszewski (Laszewski) requested an advisory opinion regarding Independent School District 623, Roseville’s (District) response to his request for government data under Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 13 (Data Practices Act). The District did not provide comments in response to this advisory opinion request.

Laszewski provided the following summary of the facts:

Laszewski submitted a data request to the District on June 18, 2024. This request stated:

I am requesting a copy of all emails, text messages and voicemail messages sent or received by you, other school district staff, and members of the School Board pertaining to school bus transportation, Centerline Charter bus company, electric school buses, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Chuck Laszewski, Sonita van der Leeuw and the Roseville Area High School Students for Climate Action. My request is for the time frame of May 1, 2022 through June 17, 2024.

The District and Laszewski first communicated regarding this request in July 2024, and Laszewski received emails from the District updating him about the status of his request on August 6 and 12, 2024. In these updates, the District communicated it was experiencing technical issues with running such a broad search of its email servers and also mentioned that the amount of data responsive to Laszewski’s request was substantial. The District stated:

. . . .If we were able to include the keyword “electric”, it would greatly reduce the results and make it more manageable.

The request as currently stated will require staff time to sort through the results once we hear back from Microsoft. In addition, redacting will be required. The request as currently stated may result in a cost to you of $500 minimum to $1,000 or more depending on staff time requirements. We can run the electric bus keywords and this will likely be of little or no cost to you.

In correspondence dated August 14, 2024, Laszewski declined to narrow his request to just correspondence mentioning “electric bus,” as suggested by the District, and requested that he receive all the data responsive to his initial request.

Laszewski next requested assistance from Data Practices Office staff, who contacted the District to inquire into his request. Then, on October 15, 2024, the District made a portion of the requested data available for inspection. At this inspection, 100 emails were available for Laszewski to review. He did not hear from the District again until December 3, 2024, when he reached out to inquire whether he could inspect more data related to his request. The District responded and scheduled a second time for inspection.

At this second visit to inspect data on December 9, 2024, there were 15 emails for Laszewski to review. Laszewski alerted the District to his concerns about the data provided, noting that it appeared the District had improperly narrowed its search to only emails containing the phrase “electric bus.” The District acknowledged that the search had been conducted only for emails containing “electric bus” due to concerns from the technology staff about the volume of emails that a broader search would generate. The District added that staff are required to review and redact all emails that Laszewski requested with the broader search. However, the District stated it would contact its technology staff about retrieving data related to Laszewski’s original request.

On May 5, 2025, Laszewski reached out to the District again to request an update on his data request. The District confirmed receipt of Laszewski’s email on May 5 but did not provide any further updates.

Issue:

Discussion:

The Data Practices Act requires government entities to establish procedures to respond to requests from members of the public in an appropriate and prompt manner and within a reasonable amount of time. (Minnesota Statutes, section 13.03, subdivision 2(a) and Minnesota Rules, part 1205.0300.) The Commissioner has previously stated that an appropriate, prompt, and reasonable response will depend on the complexity of the request and the amount of responsive data. (See Advisory Opinions 13-003 and 14-003).

Further, Minnesota Statutes, section 13.03, subdivision 1 requires government entities to “keep records containing government data in such an arrangement and condition as to make them easily accessible for convenient use.” The Data Practices Act does not contain an exception allowing a government entity to deny access to data because a request results in a large amount of data that must be compiled and reviewed. (See, e.g., Advisory Opinion 22-001.)

The Minnesota Supreme Court, in Webster v Hennepin Cnty, 910 N.W.2d 420, 431 (Minn. 2018) stated:

Section 13.03, subdivision 2(a), dictates that government data be made available and that personnel responsible for making it available establish procedures that insure it is made available. It follows, then, that when the procedures are followed and the requested data are not made available appropriately or promptly, the “established procedures” do not insure that government data are properly available.

The Commissioner is limited to the information provided to her, and the District did not offer comments or additional facts in response to this advisory opinion request.

Here, Laszewski’s request for copies of data on June 18, 2024, included specific keywords contained in more than two years of communications and, at some point, the District understood that it should offer Laszewski access to the data via inspection. The District informed Laszewski that there was a substantial amount of data responsive to this request and asked him to narrow his data request, which he declined to do. The District subsequently provided Laszewski with access to some data responsive to his request, but only after being prompted by both the requester and staff in the Data Practices Office.

As of May 2025, the District had provided Laszewski with 115 emails and, despite repeated statements that the responsive data were substantial, was not clearly communicating with Laszewski about when he could access the additional responsive data. Although the Data Practices Act does not require the District to provide Laszewski with regular updates on the status of his request, it must have procedures to ensure its response to the request is appropriate. Its current procedures are not sufficient if Laszewski remains unsure whether the District will provide access to all responsive data nearly 11 months after his initial request.

Additionally, the District’s conversations with Laszewski suggested it chose to narrow the scope of his data request due to the amount of responsive data, despite his objections. Requesters are entitled to access any public data a government entity maintains, and a government entity cannot limit what data are accessible to a requester simply because responding to the request may be burdensome or technically difficult to gather and review all responsive data. Any data that the District maintains must be easily accessible for convenient use. Therefore, the District is still obligated to provide Laszewski with access to all public data he has requested rather than just the public data in communications containing the term “electric bus.”

Taken together, the District has not complied with the Data Practices Act because it has not responded appropriately to Laszewski’s data request.

Opinion:

Based on the facts and information provided, the Commissioner’s opinion on the issue is as follows:

Independent School District 623 did not respond appropriately to a request for data submitted by a member of the public on June 18, 2024.

Signed:

Tamar Gronvall
Commissioner

June 30, 2025