Porter proposing PIO, Clarification position

BY JOHN GUERRA

NEWS WRITER

Mark Porter, the superintendent of the Monroe County School District, wants to create a part-time position to help the district manage its records and respond to public records requests.

The multiple public information and policy clarification requests from one person—former audit and finance committee member Larry Murray—has highlighted the district administration’s need to manage and streamline the thousands of pages of records it generates every year.

“I recently received what Dr. Murray has identified as “Public Records Request No. 38,” Porter wrote KonkLife last week. “It is unclear to me exactly when the count was initiated, but apparently we have reached number 38. Most of the requests involve an exchange of several emails, often for clarification of the request and/or Dr. Murray’s frustration with our response.”

Porter, who has asked staff to respond to all public requests for documents—whether from Murray or anyone else—said some of Murray’s requests were so broad that several employees had to get involved in the search and dissemination of the records.

Meanwhile, Porter said, Murray could have gone online himself and retrieved some of the records he requested.

“Several recent requests have also been for policies and/or procedures, all of which are posted and accessible on-line at http://www.neola.com/monroe-fl/,” Porter wrote.

Murray admits that only three of his requests to the district since he started last year have gone unfulfilled. Murray also required the district to spend money on lawyers and staff time preparing a defense against Murray’s lawsuit claiming the district failed to follow open records law.

School Board members have privately said that Murray’s actions are superfluous, waste taxpayer money and nothing more than grandstanding.

According to Murray, he is simply exercising his right to public information in an attempt to help members of the public who come to him with requests for help.

Porter, who considers Murray’s nearly two-score requests a burden, worries that if one person can overload the district with records requests—then the system needs improvement. The School Board continues to debate a records policy he put before them a couple of months ago, but board members have said they’ll approve a policy soon.

“I will readily admit that records management is an area of weakness and concern,” Porter wrote in his email to KonkLife. “Our current process for responding to public records requests is not acceptable and I am moving forward with efforts to correct and improve this.”

One problem: “We have a back-log of unsorted and unfiled records that needs to be attended to.”

To manage records (a difficulty at any large school district), Porter will ask the School Board to approve the creation of a Records Management Liaison Officer position at the district. According to board member Andy Griffiths, the debate is over whether the position should be a records manager first and a public information officer second, or vice versa.

Porter also will try to determine a price for what the district will charge members of the public for finding, gathering, and when necessary, copying and redacting protected information on those records before releasing them. Most states allow government offices to charge reasonable clerical fees to the public for records. Often that breaks down into a per-page cost ranging from 25 cents a page to a dollar a page, depending on the district.

Porter is still working on that figure, which the Legislature left up to the districts to determine. When he first charged Murray for records, he based it on the hourly wage of the person doing the retrieving and releasing of the records.

“While the laws and policies do provide for some modest form of cost recovery,” Porter wrote KonkLife, “There is no provision that I am aware of with regard to repetitive and/or nuisance requests.”

Porter is not without guidelines; he follows Florida statutes that regulate how quickly he must respond to requests, how quickly the records must be released; includes how members of the public appeal decisions not to release certain records, and other rules.

 

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