BLYTHEWOOD – Blythewood Town Attorney Pete Balthazar
notified The Voice on Friday, Jan. 16, that the newspaper will have to pay $500
to receive documents it requested from the Town through the FOIA (Freedom of
Information Act.) There was no determination included in the email of how the
costs were calculated, as required by law, or how many emails are responsive.
The requested documents pertain to the newspaper’s
investigation into what happened to $20,000 of hospitality tax revenue the Town
awarded Edward Straiter/Universal CMG World Entertainment to produce and manage
the 2025 Juneteenth event for the Town of Blythewood.
The Voice’s FOI request asked for copies of the hospitality
tax funding application and contract between Edward Straiter/Universal CMG
World Entertainment and the Town of Blythewood concerning the $20,000 H-tax
award.
The Voice also seeks any and all emails between Straiter and
town officials regarding the $20,000 award and dating back to Nov. 4, 2023.
Below is a portion of Balthazar’s response to The Voice’s
FOI request:
“The FOIA permits the Town to collect reasonable fees not to
exceed the actual cost of the search, retrieval, and redaction of records. The
Town’s cost for the search and retrieval of archived emails is $500. Prior to
the Town engaging its vendor to conduct a search for the requested emails
please provide a deposit in the amount of $125 by check or money order made
payable to the Town of Blythewood. As soon as the Town receives the deposit,
the Town will instruct its vendor to search for all emails to or from Mr.
Straiter concerning any subject since Nov. 4, 2023.”
Section 30-4-30 (B) of the state law provides for the Town
to produce the documents free when the information is, “primarily benefitting
the general public.” News reports based on public documents almost always
benefit the public, according to the State’s Public Official’s Guide to
Compliance with the S.C. Freedom of Information Act.
That section also requires the Town to develop and post
online a schedule of the fees for fulfilling FOIA requests, but no fees are listed
for email retrieval via the town’s third-party vendor.
S.C. law requires a government body to reply to an FOI
request within 10 working days – excluding weekends and holidays – stating
whether or not the government possesses and will turn over the requested
documents. The Town’s 10-day response on Friday was six days overdue, with no
explanation as to why it was late.
Once the 10-day determination is issued, the government body
has another 30 days to produce the requested documents. The Town’s attorney has
been late with FOI responses to The Voice in the past.
“A delay in providing records is covered in the law, and
means the request is granted,” according to Media Attorney Jay Bender, who
represents the S. C. Press Association
Section 30-4-110 (F)
of the S.C. Statute states: “If the court finds that the public body has
arbitrarily and capriciously violated the provisions of this chapter by refusal
or delay in disclosing or providing copies of a public record, it may, in
addition to actual or compensatory damages or equitable relief, impose a civil
fine of $500.”
In addition to being six days late responding with the
determination letter to The Voice’s current FOI request, the Town’s attorney
has been as late as three weeks responding to The Voice’s FOI requests in the
past. MPA Strategies, the Town’s former marketing consultant, sued the Town for
a late FOI request in 2021, and the Town had to settle the suit out of court
for $36,000.
During the Town’s strategic planning meeting Jan. 12,
council members questioned Interim Town Manager Ed Driggers about ways to
reduce the cost and shorten the wait time for the Town’s FOI responses.
“Our FOIA policy needs to be tightened up,” Councilman
Donald Brock said. “There’s no reason we should take 40, 50 days to produce
something that’s available electronically in 10-20 minutes.”
Councilwoman Trish Hovis asked if the town could reduce its
dependence on the Town’s attorney who handles all the Town’s FOI requests.
Driggers said that “responding to an FOI request is
complying with the Freedom of Information Act law.”
He went on to say, “We don’t have the capability. We just
don’t have the expertise. We don’t have the technology to do those searches.”
He also said that town hall can’t respond to FOI requests,
because there are no servers in Town Hall.
“If we’re looking for a record, our vendor has to do that
search for us,” Driggers said.
Town staff, however, confirmed that town hall computers are
able to and do search and send emails.
Bender questioned why an email search would be so expensive
for the Town.
“My emails are searchable by entering the names of the
senders, recipients, and if necessary the subject of the email. I would hope
the vendor would have a similar process, so the question arises, why would a
search in a limited window of time for specific email senders and recipients
cost $500 to retrieve?” Bender asked.
“But part of what I have to do is choose how we use people’s
resources,” Driggers said at the strategic planning meeting, “It’s always a
choice of how you use resources. If that [answering FOI requests] is a priority
for us, then we can dedicate resources to do that.
“In what you have me doing, I can’t take that on,” said
Driggers, who has a service agreement with the Town to work approximately 20
hours a week at a rate of $200 per hour.
“Is that not something someone on staff could undertake?”
Brock asked.
“Very possibly,” Driggers said.
“When might you have an answer on that?” Brock asked.
“I’ve met with most of our staff now in one-on-one sessions,
and I’ve had some conversations with some of our folks relative to… there’s a
lot of things to talk about,” Driggers said.
The law states that the production fees for FOI responses
“should be based on the hourly wage of the lowest paid staff employee who has
the skills and training to fulfill the request.”
Driggers said it is the vendor who charges $500 for email
searches, not town hall.
“Then, perhaps we should look for another vendor,” Brock
said.
