Agenda - Council - 02/08/2021 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

imposes costs on local taxpayers. Smaller cities struggle with limited staff and resources while larger cities struggle with larger complex databases. The MGDPA must balance the right of citizens to access public data with the cost to municipalities of complying with certain types of data requests. In 2014, the Legislature imposed additional security requirements on political subdivisions in an attempt to prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing private data. Adequate security measures are important, but they make compliance with the MGDPA more difficult and costly. Although the Legislature has made compliance with the MGDPA a priority, funding for the Data Practices Office of the Department of Administration, the department charged with overseeing the MGDPA, does not reflect the increased need for local government assistance. Cities continue to receive repetitive, overly broad and far-reaching data requests that require significant staff time to locate government records, redact private data or data unrelated to the request, and assemble documents to be provided in order to comply with requirements to provide access to public government data. Cities are experiencing significant increases in wide- ranging data requests, often utilizing specific word searches through multiple databases. "Word search" requests typically result in a voluminous quantity of data that must be reviewed and redacted, with significant staff cost. Because word searches retrieve even incidental references to the searched term, the search results often contain a significant volume of data that has little informational value. If the requestor does not request copies, the search costs cannot be recovered — even though the requestor dictated the specifics of the search. 118 Furthermore, in some situations, as with overly broad data requests related to "applicant" lists, staff time and costs are significantly increased and not recoverable for very limited public benefit. The MGDPA also limits the ability of cities to be reimbursed for responding to requests. Cities are limited to charging only 25-cents per page for copies of police motor vehicle incident reports, which does not cover the city cost for copying, while the Commissioner of Public Safety is exempt from this restriction thereby permitting the Department of Public Safety to continue to charge $5 for incident reports that cities are required to submit to the department. Response: As the cost of complying with the MGDPA increases, the League supports: a) Providing additional state funding to assist political subdivisions with meeting the increasing complexity of managing government data. b) Providing state funding for statewide data practices training. c) Allowing political subdivisions to charge for the staff time that is required to comply with wide-ranging data requests regardless of whether copies of the data are requested or allowing political subdivisions to charge for actual costs for collection of data when the requestor makes his or her own copy of the data by taking a photo, bringing a copy device, etc. d) Providing a mechanism that would permit cities to challenge whether a data request is reasonable and made in good faith. e) Creating and funding an ombudsperson position in the Data Practices Office to determine reasonableness and proportionality of data practices requests.