Governor Signs Bill to Improve Maryland Public Records Law

The bill, HB 1024, was developed by the MDDC Press Association, working with state, county and local government representatives.

"This goes a considerable way toward clearing up ambiguities in the law and is a most significant step in the long effort to improve access to public records in Maryland," said Tom Marquardt, executive editor of The Capital and chair of the Association’s Freedom of Information Subcommittee. It was the FOI Subcommittee that conducted MDDC’s public records audit two years ago that discovered requests for access to public records were rejected by state government officials 50 percent of the time.

Those survey results got the attention of state and local government leaders and led to a series of corrective actions, Marquardt said. First came a new PIA compliance guide from the state attorney general’s office. The next step was a series of about a dozen educational workshops across the state at which local officials and press representatives discussed the public records law and how its provisions could best be utilized. The bill clarifying the law itself is the third major result of the survey.

MDDC Government Affairs Committee Chair Carol Melamed noted that in all of those developments stemming from the MDDC records audit the press worked with the Maryland Association of Counties, the Maryland Municipal League, the state attorney general’s office and key legislators, most notably House Speaker Casper Taylor who sponsored the legislation.

The "positive working relationship" forged with these government interests is another very important result of this entire effort, said Melamed, who is vice president of government affairs for The Washington Post. "It will result in more efficient operation of the PIA for government employees and the public," she said.

Among other things, the bill:

• requires records custodians to consider whether to designate types of records that are to be made available immediately upon request, and maintain a current list of those types of records

• provides for circumstances where a written request for records is not required

• provides for prompt notification to an applicant when a custodian determines a requested record does not exist

• clarifies that the identity or affiliation of the applicant is not required for access to the record except in certain, limited circumstances

• defines "reasonable fee" for producing records as "actual cost" incurred by the government unit holding the record

• removes the punitive damages penalty in the law but retains attorneys fees, actual damages and other remedies.