New UF study ranks states' records access laws

March 11, 2005

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Open records laws in North Carolina, Florida, Michigan, Missouri and Indiana provide the best access to members of the public requesting records, according to new findings compiled by University of Florida researchers.

Study results, released by the Marion Brechner Center Citizen Access Project at UF's College of Journalism and Communications, show that these five states’ records laws have the best overall procedures for handling public records and responding to requests for them. Even so, the findings showed that the best of the state laws are not as access friendly as possible. The five leading states, along with 37 others and the District of Columbia, score only a “4” on a scale of 1 to 7 for records access. Eight states -- Tennessee, Wyoming, Arizona, Montana, Ohio, Alabama, South Dakota and Alaska -- scored a “3” on the scale.

“North Carolina, Florida and Michigan do comparatively well overall. So at least a few of the states that many believed were sensitive to access in fact have laws that allow access better than the others,” said Bill Chamberlin, project director. “In general, though, no states have laws that adequately protect public records or make them as available as they should be.

The study is released as the nation’s news media seek to highlight the importance of Freedom of Information to Americans through news stories and editorials during Sunshine Week, March 13-19.

The top-ranked state statutes feature some excellent provisions -- including laws that allow any person to access a record regardless of how they want to use the record -- but they also fail to adequately encourage officials to respond directly to the needs of the public. The laws of the states scoring a “3” are often too sparse and tend to have at least some laws that are somewhat hostile to access, Chamberlin said. Chamberlin, an eminent scholar of mass communications in UF's College of Journalism and Communications, said the study shows, in general, Plains states and Mountain states have weaker records-access provisions than do Midwestern and Southern states.

The project’s panel of experts, known as the Sunshine Review Board, compared the state laws for 30 categories of legal provisions related to records requests and ranked them on a Sunshine Index for openness. The overall ranking is based on states’ performance in six subcategories: redaction (removing sensitive information mixed with public data); copying, inspection and delivery of records; requester requirements; agency responsibilities to manage the records; request specifications; and agency responsiveness.

The study showed that Pennsylvania, California, North Carolina, Vermont, Rhode Island and Massachusetts had more requester-friendly requirements including whether a requester has to state a purpose for his request, present identification or be a U.S. citizen or state resident to request a public record.

Louisiana and Kentucky received the best overall rating for timeliness in agency response and denials, whether officials will create a new public record on request or whether officials will provide a certain number of copies free to requesters. At the same time, laws in North Carolina, New Jersey, Utah, Nevada and Montana are most helpful for requesters seeking to copy records, inspect records and have records copied and delivered to them.

The Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project allows citizens and public officials to better understand and evaluate citizen access to local and state government in all 50 states. The project is building a database of open meetings and open records law summaries from the 50 states and the District of Columbia. It ranks state laws and then puts the comparisons on the Internet, with appropriate summaries and citations.

Members of the project’s advisory board include: Rebecca Daugherty, FOI Service Center, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; Sandy Davidson, associate professor, University of Missouri-Columbia, School of Journalism; Bob J. Freeman, executive director, New York State Committee on Open Government; Kevin Goldberg, associate, Cohn and Marks; Harry Hammitt, editor/publisher, Access Reports; Frosty Landon, National Freedom of Information Coalition; Linda Lightfoot, executive editor, The (Baton Rouge, La.) Advocate; Ian Marquand, special projects coordinator, KPAX TV, and Society of Professional Journalists past Freedom of Information Committee chairman; Patrice McDermott, assistant director, Office of Government Relations American Library Association; Eric Turner, director of public education with the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission; and Charles D. Tobin, attorney, Holland & Knight, Washington, D.C.

For more information on Sunshine Week, see www.sunshineweek.com.

A complete ranking of all laws is available at the project’s Web site at www.citizenaccess.org.