‘This is a winning policy’: 2 Beaufort Co. school board members ask to waive FOIA fees
Update: This story has been updated to show the board of education plans to discuss FOIA fees at a January meeting, per board vice chairwoman Cathy Robine.
Two Beaufort County school board members are advocating to eliminate Freedom of Information Act request fees from members of the media, citing Beaufort County’s decision to do so after a dispute with The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette over a $655 FOIA bill.
School board reps John Dowling and Mel Campbell began emailing the board about the “winning policy” on Nov. 25, hours after the Packet and Gazette reported that Beaufort County Administrator Ashley Jacobs agreed to provide documents related to contracts awarded to former employees for free.
“I advocated this to the BOE in the spring of 2017, as a ‘civilian,’” Okatie representative John Dowling wrote to the rest of the board in a Nov. 25 email. “Glad that our County Administrator has taken this step.”
District spokesman Jim Foster said Monday that the county’s new policy “essentially is what we do already.” The district only charges for requests that take more than an hour to complete, he said.
“If the board wants to have that discussion, we’ll be happy to provide them info on that,” Foster said.
Dowling requested an agenda item to discuss FOIA fees in a Nov. 26 email. That request “has gone nowhere,” he said Monday. FOIA fees are not listed as a topic for Tuesday’s board of education meeting.
Board vice chairwoman Cathy Robine said Tuesday that the board officers had decided to discuss FOIA fees at one of their January meetings as the result of a discussion at their Dec. 2 agenda-setting committee meeting. She said the board will likely set the exact date of the discussion at their next committee meeting.
“As soon as I can get it on the agenda as a public discussion, I will vigorously pursue the idea,” Dowling said Monday. “Unfortunately, it’s up to the chair and the officers, all three of them, to get it on there.”
While many FOIA requests to the school district are fulfilled at no cost, others are billed at an hourly rate of $40. This number is based on the hourly pay for Jennifer Staton, who serves as the district’s FOIA officer and risk manager.
Foster said Monday that of the 47 requests the district has responded to from the Packet and Gazette, 41 have not cost anything.
Between January 1 and July 1, the district received 55 FOIA requests, 18 of which had an attached cost in the district’s response, according to documents presented to the board on Oct. 15.
In 11 cases, the requester accepted the district’s quote. The district collected $969.76 for requests estimated at $1,160.72.
Beaufort County’s FOIA decision
Beaufort County Administrator Ashley Jacobs decided to waive fees for all public information requests from the media as long as the requests are not “burdensome to staff” on Nov. 22.
The decision came two weeks after the Packet and Gazette reported that county fees varied from $16 to $33.19 to $72 per hour of work on a FOIA request, and that a request for documents related to contracts for former employees had jumped from an estimated cost of $299.17 to $655.66.
Those documents, the first provided for free under the new policy, showed that Beaufort County paid its former clerk of council over $24,000 through a consulting contract after she accused a council member of sexual harassment and resigned.
The county has paid nearly $364,000 to 37 current or former government employees through similar agreements since 2009, according to those documents. An outside investigation into the practice determined at least one of those contracts likely violated state law.
School board member Campbell called Jacobs’ decision “a victory for the people of Beaufort County” in an email. He said Monday that he hopes the board will pick up the issue “in the next couple of meetings.”
“This is a winning policy,” Campbell responded to Dowling Nov. 26. “If we have nothing to hide, let’s not hide it. Cost gives the perception that we want to make it harder to get to what should be readily available.”
This story was originally published December 10, 2019 at 4:55 AM.