“Completely transparent”: Beaufort Co. hands over records and waives fees for media
Beaufort County government, which had insisted The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette pay $655 for a public records request, agreed Friday to provide the records to the newspapers for free — halting a dispute between the newspaper and the county over the high cost of public information.
County Administrator Ashley Jacobs, who released the documents, said she will waive fees for all public information requests from the media as long as the requests are not “burdensome to staff.”
On Nov. 9, the newspaper wrote about the county’s ambiguous prices and exorbitant fees related to Freedom of Information Act requests. The paper cited examples in which the county charged residents hundreds, and in one case thousands, of dollars to access public records. The county was charging the paper hundreds of dollars for information that, according to its website, should have been online and available for free.
A week after the story, columnist Liz Farrell published an opinion piece, “Need tips on hiding information? Ask Beaufort County government. It knows how,” which outlined the county’s high fees and why the records requested were important to the public.
After Jacobs read the story and column, she sat down Nov. 22 with a reporter, discussed the documents requested and provided the reporter paper and digital copies at no charge. Jacobs also said the county would refund the paper’s $74.79 down payment.
“It’s a new day in Beaufort County, and we’re going to be completely transparent,” said Jacobs, who stressed that she wants to increase the public’s trust in local government.
The request
On Sept. 19, The Island Packet & Beaufort Gazette submitted a FOIA request to the county related to independent service contracts with former government employees.
Some of the records were already published on the county’s website, including the controversial $24,000 consulting contract for former interim Administrator Josh Gruber. Joanie Winters, a lawyer the council hired to investigate the contract, found that the county likely broke state law when it wrote the contract by not adhering to a “cooling off period” that prevents county officials from working for the county for a year after leaving their job.
In her investigative report, Winters said contracts with former government employees were “business as usual” in the county.
“We seem to have been doing these types of contracts for some time, some of which appear to be open-ended to date,” Winters said in her report.
After The Packet filed the FOIA request for the contracts, the records department estimated the search would cost $299.17, and the newspaper agreed to pay a 25% deposit to start the search. However, on Nov. 1, the department emailed The Packet with a $655.66 bill for the records.
Several county officials said that price was too high, and one called the county’s FOIA fees “ridiculous.” After the story about the $655 fee was published, the records department repeatedly told the paper that the fee would remain the same.
S.C. law states governments may charge fees for searching, retrieving, redacting and copying records, but it is not mandatory. The law also allows governments to provide records for free when the information is “primarily benefiting the general public.”
The S.C. Press Association guidebook notes, “News reports based on public documents almost always benefit the public.”
This story was originally published November 25, 2019 at 3:56 PM.
