Right-to-know fee policies
As you know by now, Montana boasts a unique and expansive constitutional guarantee to public information. But Montana law allows agencies to charge Montanans a fee for completing Right to Know requests, if the agency chooses to do so.
Understanding why different fees are being assessed in different circumstances can be hard. In an effort to better advise Montanans with their information requests and to encourage transparency across state agencies, MTP requested all state executive agencies for their current information request fee policies.
After reviewing the agencies’ fee policies, we found what we’d expected: state agencies do not have a common understanding of how to assess fees for requests. Some agencies make clear an hourly rate they will charge Montanans to fulfill requests. Others don’t. Some agencies list costs for copying documents. Others don’t. Some agencies require you to pay upfront. Others don’t.
But disparate policies are just one reason we’re frustrated with the information we’ve received. The only thing the agencies seem to agree on is that an agency will charge Montanans a fee at its sole discretion for the time the agency spends fulfilling its constitutional duty.
Nearly all agencies allow the employee completing the information request to charge the citizen for the time that employee spends working on the request, generally billed at the employee’s regular, hourly rate. This means that the agency employee receives his taxpayer-funded wage as he normally would, and the requestor pays the same amount to the agency in order to receive public information. Montanans utilizing their Right to Know, then, are essentially billed twice.
Further, agencies like the Office of Public Information Requests — an agency created for the purpose of completing information requests — bill a requestor not just for the time its employees spend working on the request, but also for the amount of time the agency spends deciding what fees to bill the requestor.
Government agencies are plainly treating information requests different from any other kind of citizen request. When you register to vote with the Secretary of State, the office doesn’t send you a bill for the time it takes the employee to verify and enter your information into its system. But it does charge for the time that same employee spends fulfilling an information request. Offices completing public information requests shouldn’t be treating these requests as an additional chore — they should recognize and respect the process as the constitutional duty that it is.
These policies are allowed under Montana law. Real change in the realm of government transparency — like advocating for a change in the assessment of fee policies—will take a concerted effort on behalf of all Montanans. It will take an understanding of this special constitutional right and a desire to see that right protected.
We’ve published the agency fee policies we received and our summaries of them on our website at montanatransparencyproject.org/resources. The policies we currently have are from the Office of Public Information Requests (which serves almost all agencies reporting to the Governor), the Department of Justice, the Office of the Montana State Auditor, the Office of Public Instruction, the Department of Environmental Quality and the Secretary of State. We encourage readers to take a look.
Agencies have made it possible to hide behind the high wall of fees — especially when costs are required upfront, before the fulfillment of requests. MTP hopes that by publishing and breaking down these policies on our website, Montanans will be more equipped to understand the scope of state agencies’ fee schedules and recognize when fees appear disproportionate in relation to the request.
This agency fee information is available on our website at montanatransparencyproject.org/resources. If you have questions, comments, column topics you’d like us to address, or if you want to submit your own information request, contact us at info@montanatransparencyproject.org and we would be happy to help!
Addie Slanger is communication chair of the Montana Transparency Project.