Employee Education is Target Following Records Audit

Employee Education is Target Following Records Audit

    A government employee education program to improve compliance with Maryland’s public records law will begin in December as a result of last summer’s public records audit by MDDC member newspapers.
     The project, Access Maryland, found that requests for public records are honored only about 50 percent of the time.
     House Speaker Casper R. Taylor, Jr. and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, Jr. both promised support of the employee training program during meetings with MDDC representatives, according to Carol Melamed, vice president of government affairs at The Washington Post and chair of the MDDC Government Affairs committee.
     The core of the training program is a short compliance guide that the state attorney general’s office is preparing. MDDC and other groups provided input for the draft, and most of the newspaper suggestions were accepted.
     Assistant Attorney General Jack Schwartz and representatives of the Maryland Association of Counties and Maryland Municipal League and Melamed for MDDC met to develop the training program. Plans include three sessions in different areas of the state before Christmas. They will be offered as part of MML’s ongoing "academy" training program and will target municipal and county officials.
     According to Melamed, the program will include a panel with a journalist participating. She and MDDC FOI Subcommittee Chair Tom Marquardt, managing editor of The (Annapolis) Capital, are working with Schwartz on materials for the program. The intent is to create subsequent sessions on additional topics for front-line employees, those who handle the requests at the counter.
     Legislation to help achieve the goal of improved compliance may be proposed at a later date. This would be consensus legislation, said Melamed, not simply a press effort. Possible areas for legislation to address are clarification of the 30-day response time, the written request requirement, arrest logs and electronic data.
     The Access Maryland project was conducted June 15 by 20 newspapers from across the state and covered all 23 counties and Baltimore City. In each of the jurisdictions, reporters asked for six records clearly identified in the law as being public – arrest logs, nursing home inspection reports, police chief’s or sheriff’s expense reports, school violence reports, school superintendent’s employment contract and the driving record of the local state senator.
      In only 25 percent of the cases were the records readily given out. In about another quarter of the cases the records were made available after repeated queries by the reporters and up to 30 days delay while written FOI requests were processed. In the other half of the cases access was denied.
     Complete results of the audit are available at MDDC’s Web site, www.mddcpress.com.