Title
PROPOSED ORDINANCE REGARDING PUBLIC RECORDS TO REFLECT RECENT CHANGES IN THE WASHINGTON STATE PUBLIC RECORDS ACT
COUNCIL STRATEGIC INITIATIVE ADDRESSED:
Council Initiative: Continue effective financial management
CITY ATTORNEY REVIEW: REQUIRED
SUMMARY STATEMENT:
On May 16, 2017, Governor Inslee signed ESHB 1594 and EHB 1595 amending the Washington State Public Records Act. The proposed Ordinance would amend the Longview Municipal Code to reflect the recent changes in the Washington State Public Records Act.
Agencies are now authorized to charge for copying and producing electronic copies. We have chosen to adopt the default charges rather than calculate the actual costs related to production, file transfer, storage and transmission. These new fees are as follows:
· 10 cents/page for records scanned into electronic format
· 5 cents for every four electronic files or attachments uploaded to an email, cloud storage service, or other electronic delivery system
· 10 cents/gigabyte for transmitting records electronically
· Option to charge a flat fee of $2.00 for providing any records (not just electronic) if we can reasonably estimate that the cost for producing the records is equal to or more than $2.00
Additionally, all agencies must now track and log:
· Identity of requestor (if provided)
· Date & text of request
· Description of records produced in response to request
· Description of records redacted or withheld and the reasons for redaction/withholding
· Date of final disposition of the request
Other changes affecting the City of Longview include:
· Agencies may deny requests for “all records” of an agency not relating to a particular topic
· Agencies may deny automatically generated bot requests received from the same requestor within a 24-hour period if the requests cause excessive interference with the other essential functions of the agency
· Definition of public records modified to exclu...
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