WHAT THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE EDITORIAL BOARD HAD TO SAY:

TEXAS law requires government agencies to release public records when citizens inquire about how officials conduct the public's business and how they spend public money. The public owns such information and has an inherent right to it. An attempt by the Katy Independent School District's board of trustees, if successful, would have eroded that right.

Last month, board members were set to vote on a troubling resolution that would have required those who request information from the school district to prove that releasing the information would serve a "verifiable public interest." The public purpose - easy access to public information and the promotion of open government- should be obvious from the start.

Fortunately, the Katy trustees backed away from their absurd plan to ask state lawmakers to require information seekers to justify their requests. But their last-minute reversal before the scheduled vote was not because the trustees suddenly saw the wrongheadedness of the proposal. Rather, board members and Katy Superintendent Alton Frailey decided they didn't want to fade the heat for preventing the community from knowing what goes on inside Katy ISD.

"I don't want our board to be conflicted and misconstrued and misrepresented as trying to thwart public information," Frailey said. "I'm not wanting to carry the water, but I have put the bucket in the well."

Had the board proceeded, the public would have rightly seen it as being against open government.

Frailey previously said the district was having to deal with too many requests for information that administrators considered frivolous, burdensome or meant to harass the district.

According to Chronicle writers Jennifer Radcliffe and Helen Eriksen, Katy fielded 439 open records requests over the past 12 months. These were for student directories, police reports, documentation of student academic performance, reference letters from employee files, documents related to district finances and the like. Most of the requests came from journalists, parents, community groups, educators and education watchdogs.

In other words, they were just the sort of requests by just who you'd think would have a legitimate interest in knowing what is happening on Katy campuses and in district offices.

Frailey says other districts have more severe problems with nuisance requestors. The more than 1,500 open records requests filed in the 5,600-student Lake Travis school district during the 2006-07 school year cost $600,000 to deal with and prompted the Legislature to allow districts to charge any requestor who uses more than 36 hours of staff time a year.

Repetitive, massive or petty requests for public information that are unfocused fishing expeditions or meant to harass administrators are aggravating and can cost taxpayers thousands of dollars. But the Katy resolution would have attacked this problem by dropping a nuclear bomb on the public's access to the workings of its own government.

The Legislature's response to the Lake Travis ISD problem provides a more appropriately nuanced solution. If districts are having problems with information requests that are more burdensome because of the nature of digital information - such as the need to search thousands of e-mails - they can charge reasonable fees to cover actual costs. Just because there is more information to sift through doesn't invalidate the legitimacy of public requests.

The changing nature of information storage does not justify attempts to keep public records private. The public should not have to prove anything to exercise its right to know what government officials are up to.

http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2008_4592715