Issue:

In his request for an opinion, Mr. Ratwik asked the Commissioner to address the following issue:

Discussion:

The issues Mr. Ratwik has raised are almost identical to several the Commissioner recently addressed in Advisory Opinion 01-031. The issue in 01-031 was that Ms. Graham asked five Minnesota State agencies - Department of Employee Relations (DOER), Department of Public Safety (DPS), Department of Children, Families and Learning (CFL), Department of Labor and Industry (DLI), and Department of Human Services (DHS) - to provide her with access to all public data about all past and present employees. Ms. Graham has a variety of long-standing disputes with each of the agencies.

In Advisory Opinion 01-031, the Commissioner opined that the agencies were not required to provide data responsive to Ms. Graham's request because of the unique facts of the situation and because the circumstances surrounding the requests indicated that Ms. Graham's requests were not necessarily motivated by her desire to gain access to the data. The Commissioner wrote:

Ms. Graham's request of each agency is to inspect all public data about current and former employees.

Minnesota Statutes, section 13.03, subdivision 3, states, Upon request to a responsible authority or designee, a person shall be permitted to inspect and copy public government data at reasonable times and places... Interpretation of this statutory language seems clear and unambiguous; when a person asks for public data, the government entity shall provide such data. There is no limitation on the volume of data that may be requested or that must be provided. However, that interpretation seems less clear when the person has a past history of making requests and then fails to view the data once they are available for inspection.

Minnesota Statutes, section 645.16, states, The object of all interpretation and construction of laws is to ascertain and effectuate the intention of the legislature. Section 645.16 further provides that the words of a law must be considered in their application to an existing situation to determine if the interpretation is free from ambiguity. When applying the facts of Ms. Graham's previous interactions with the five state agencies to her most recent requests for all data on current and former employees, the interpretation of section 13.03 becomes ambiguous.

To resolve ambiguous situations such as this, the Legislature has provided additional tools to determine underlying intent. Minnesota Statutes, section 645.17, provides, in pertinent part, that the Legislature does not intend a result that is absurd, impossible of execution, or unreasonable. In this case, Commissioner Carter has not indicated that responding to Ms. Graham's request would be impossible to execute, although he does estimate that it would take many months and would require diverting critical staff or hiring additional staff.

Thus, the next question is whether responding to Ms. Graham's request would create an absurd or unreasonable result. As per State v. Murphy, 545 N.W.2d 909, 916 (Minn. 1966); Knopp v. Gutterman, 102 N.W.2d 689, 695 (Minn. 1960), if the application of section 13.03 to the facts of this situation is either absurd or unreasonable, section 645.17 requires a different outcome. In reviewing Commissioner Carter's discussion of Ms. Graham's November 2000 request of each agency, her conduct suggests that, for the following reasons, she is using Chapter 13 as a tool to harass or punish each agency....

The Commissioner asserts that such a result is not what the Legislature intended when it enacted the public access requirements of Chapter 13. The expenditure of public resources to gather public data that the requestor will not review is an absurd and unreasonable result. As referenced above, Minnesota Statutes, section 645.17, states that when interpreting a statute, neither an absurd nor an unreasonable result is presumed. Rather a logical, practical result is preferred. State v. Murphy, 545 N.W.2d at 916 citing Industrial Rubber Applicators, Inc. v. Eaton Metal Prods. Co., 285 Minn. 511, 515, 171 N.W.2d 728, 732 (1969). Using the facts of this unique situation to interpret section 13.03, the only reasonable result is that the five state agencies are not required to provide Ms. Graham with the public data she requested.

In the case at hand, Ms. Graham provided the District with a list of the types of data she wanted to inspect about all past and present employees of the Edina School District. The list is essentially all types of data about employees that are public. In his opinion request, Mr. Ratwik provided information that, combined with additional information of which the Commissioner is aware (see Advisory Opinion 01-031), leads the Commissioner to conclude that Ms. Graham may be requesting the data as a means of retaliation against the District. Mr. Ratwik pointed out that Ms. Graham's numerous and detailed requests for data began after she had an encounter with the District, the result of which was unsatisfactory to Ms. Graham. It was after this encounter that Ms. Graham began making fairly substantial data requests to the District. Mr. Ratwik also stated, The thousands of personnel and payroll records the District has created since it was formed cannot simply be gathered for the requestor's inspection. The District believes that the request was made with the primary, if not sole, intent of inflicting upon it and its employees the cost and burden of separating the public from the private data to be found in the files.

When the Commissioner combines the facts of this situation with his knowledge of Ms. Graham's past involvement with several state agencies and with Intermediate School District 287 (see Advisory Opinion 01-031), he is of the opinion that requiring the District to provide the requested data to Ms. Graham would be an absurd and unreasonable result. The Commissioner reaches this conclusion because, given Ms. Graham's past conduct, it is reasonable to assume she made her latest data request as a retaliatory measure and/or has no intention of inspecting the data. This is not what the Legislature intended when it enacted the public access requirements of Chapter 13. Minnesota Statutes, section 654.17, states that when interpreting a statute, neither an absurd nor an unreasonable result is presumed to be what the Legislature intended. Therefore, it is the Commissioner's determination, given this unique and very specific set of facts, that the District is not required to provide access to public data about all past and present District employees, in response to Ms. Graham's December 28, 2000, request.

As a final note, however, the Commissioner reiterates a comment he made in Advisory Opinion 01-031:

...The Commissioner wishes to make clear that the conclusion he reached in this opinion is based on a unique and very specific set of facts. The outcome is in no way intended to suggest that a government entity does not have to respond to a data request merely because responding will be costly or time-consuming.

Opinion:

Based on the facts and information provided, my opinion on the issue that Mr. Ratwik raised is as follows:

Signed:

David F. Fisher
Commissioner

Dated: March 27, 2001