Anchorage Daily News editor Paul Jenkins says that the refusal to release the Palin’s administration’s e-mails in a timely fashion is only the most recent attempt by the Alaska state government to withhold records from the public in defiance of the state’s public records law. -DB
Alaska state government is bruising, if not breaking, the law by failing to release in a timely fashion Palin administration e-mails and other information sought under the state public records law.
From its first days, Sarah Palin’s administration played fast and loose with public records. Some requests for e-mails and documents from her brief tenure have been pending for more than a year. That is outrageous, and Gov. Sean Parnell wants yet more time.
The excuses?
That there are too many requests; that they are too complicated, some involving boatloads of documents; that the software involved is antiquated; that the e-mails must be searched manually and that a lawyer must resolve issues of privacy and executive privilege; and, that the 10-day time frame to assemble the information, as required by law, is not enough given the other factors.
Good grief.
Then add the absolutely obscene fees assigned to the search process and you have a nifty way to bury information requests.
The administration, for example, wanted to charge the Associated Press $45 million (that’s million with an “m”) for its requests, and it wanted $15 million apiece from other news agencies — in many cases for essentially the same information.
The Anchorage Press was told it would have to pay $6,500 for information it wanted; a University of Alaska scientist, $500,000 for state polar bear information the public already paid for.
Me? I got off easy.
In early May last year, I asked for state records that definitively would have shown whether two of Gov. Sarah Palin’s team had broken state law in using state time, resources and equipment in a backdoor bid to unseat Randy Ruedrich as head of the Alaska Republican Party.
Using state time and resources for political purposes would be a no-no, even in the rules-be-damned Palin administration. I thought it would be easy. After all, I told myself, this is the clear and transparent administration of Sarah Palin.
Long story, short: The public records I wanted could be had — for $1,250 — and, oh, by the way, I was told, there was no telling when I might get them. I had, after all, asked for a lot, and there were the lawyers and consultations and questions of executive privilege and such.
I was assured it was not a delaying tactic; not a way to deny information. Of course it was — and it worked nicely.
Open records are anathema to any government, including ours. Laws guaranteeing access were designed to protect us schmoes from tyrants and outright crooks who find it ever so much easier to work in the shadows.
Finding ways to circumvent those laws –and avoiding embarrassment and ugly headlines — is just a grim reality of government, and Alaska, unfortunately, has settled upon what appears to be a successful and winning strategy. Government drags its feet, makes costs prohibitive, and then makes you wait, hoping you will go away.
The result is a de facto denial of information you are entitled to get in a timely fashion under Alaska public records law. After all, how valuable to a news organization — or somebody with a bulldozer poised to rip up his back yard — is information already old enough for a history book?
No matter the excuse or the reason, what we have is a blatant denial of citizens’ rights under the law and a government not in all that much of a hurry to correct the situation. It now smells like a stall, a coverup. People are wondering: What are they hiding?
What a wonderful time to update the state’s computer and software systems to allow citizens access to government without forcing them to wait for more than a year and mortgage their homes. It would restore faith in government. If, in the state’s fat $12 billion budget, the money cannot be found for such upgrades, how about we just hire the job done?
Somewhere there is somebody — a law firm, a computer whiz, a kid who understands I-Pods — who can to do the job with a minimum of fuss. In the end, I suspect enterprising young lawyers will have to haul the state into court for failure to obey its own law. We can only hope that whoever does it has subpoena power. That’s the only way they will ever get the state records they need.
Copyright 2009 The Anchorage Daily News