A newly elected councillor wants access to a significant volume of records that are not related to recent or current items going before Council (e.g., copies of contracts, spreadsheet of all financial transactions, etc.). Looking for suggestions on how to manage records requests from individual councilors.
How to handle records requests from a Council member?
When our Council requests records that are not part of a current or upcoming agenda item, we have them file a Request for Public Records Form just like the public. This happens quite often during election time. Be fair and do the same for all of them.
We have a request form in place that is filled out electronically and submitted to the Clerk's department. Staff are then able to prioritize the request and provide the information in a timely fashion. We do not have a RMS in place that would allow them to access most documents electronically, but this system prevents the request from being misplaced or requested of individual staff members and allows management to fulfill the request appropriately.
Provide them with access to iCompass (user setting as view only) and Councillors can then access past agenda builds and meeting minutes etc. If Filepro is where you store all your in-house records, then members of Council can also view this information without you having to print and provide individually (bylaws, reports, spreadsheets).
If this is a "newly-elected" Councillor, he/she is now your new boss. Give them everything and anything they want. Especially if it is going to help them do their job quicker and easier. It's our job to make them look good, FilePro makes it easy to do that. One of the first things we did was give our Councillors access to FilePro. They don't have the ability to change anything, but they can certainly look at anything they want.
My policy is if one Councilmember makes a request for a public document we provide a copy of what he received to all Councilmembers, the Mayor and the City Administrator. I also provide a cover memo stating this is being provided due to a request from a Councilmember. That way no one is blindsided. I do ask that they complete a public records request form and have only had one occassion where the Councilmember refused. The request was still filled following the steps above as the law does not require anyone to complete a form to obtain a public document. The request can come in many forms and still needs to be addressed as any other request for records.
Any member of the public can request any piece of information, which is under custody or control of a public institution. In this case, just treat as a public member, for which the process is the same (could encourage informal rather to formal process, based on the requested information). Your institution can disclose the requested records either in full or in part as long as no exemptions applicable. As mentioned, request involves large amount of documents, fee estainmated cost would be notified and if exceeds $25.00 then advise requester to deposit 50% upfront to proceed further within gievn stipulated time, if no response received for estimated cost then can be treated as "abandoned" and notify the same to the requester after the deadline mentioned in the "interim fee estimate decision" letter.
Hope it helps, happy to share my thoughts on Records and Access and Privacy issues as well.
Thanks
I am new to this group, access can be granted to council subject to the type of documents that were upload into filepro. My thoughts. as long as "no personal and high confidentialilty infromation" then viewing documents would not be an issue otherwise..... I guess, your institution upload documents of general in nature
Let that Council member know that your office is open Monday - Friday and he is welcome to come in any time to review the records that he is requesting. Also, see if the request can be narrowed down - work with the members to identify what they are really looking for. And, see if you can just scan and send via ea-mail.
Records requests from councilmembers can be tricky. My guidance is that the only time you process a records request from a councilmember is when it supports a campaign. If the registration period has opened and your councilmembers start asking for attendance records and other specific information that they are utilizing for their campaign, I would say do a public records request for all of them.
Newly electeds start out very Gung Ho! And tend to make a lot of requests at the beginning of their first term. We provide them with whatever they request that we have access to. I find that after their first term, they tend to settle down quite a bit and if re-elected, the second term shows they have calmed down exponentially.