Transparency Update is usually a space where I either complain about a public agency doing a less-than-stellar job of complying with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), because this unfortunately often results in records being turned over. I also try to offer tips about best practices for filing public records requests that help the general public use FOIA more effectively.

But because I’m so critical of how public agencies in Connecticut discharge their FOIA duties, I think it’s also important to highlight cases where they’re doing a good job of being transparent.

Inside Investigator recently received a tip claiming that Southington was charging an hourly research fee for FOIA requests. That was a potential huge red flag.

FOIA does allow public agencies to charge requesters hourly fees, but in very limited circumstances. While other states allow public agencies to pass on the costs of the hourly salary of employees who spend time searching for records responsive to a request, often to the tune of hundreds or thousands of dollars, the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) has found that searching for records is a fundamental responsibility of public agencies under the law, and that they may not pass costs along to requestors.

Agencies can pass on hourly costs in the form of fees for things like formatting records or if they have to purchase a program or consult a specialist to retrieve data. They can also charge for digital media, like flash drives, to store records on, and can charge a per-page-copying fee for the production of paper (but not electronic) records. In no case is the agency allowed to charge requesters more than the costs it incurred obtaining the records it turns over.

As someone who files requests in multiple states, including those that allow agencies to charge for time staff spend searching for records, the fee structure in Connecticut’s FOIA, as interpreted by the FOIC, is a major boon to transparency. When you’re worrying about generating hundreds if not thousands in fees by requesting the records you actually want, you’re effectively putting a cap on the amount of public information the public can access and, perhaps most worryingly, creating a regressive effect that more severely caps that access for those without financial resources.

It’s with that in mind, and with the added context of several high-profile court challenges to FOIC rulings rejecting public agencies’ claims they can charge hourly search and retrieval fees, that I took a closer look at the fee schedule posted on Southington’s website, which stated the town charges a “research fee of $30 an hour after the first 30 minutes.”

That wording is ambiguous: it could mean the town was charging for time employees spent searching for records (which would violate FOIA) or it could mean the town was charging for time spent formatting and retrieving records from specialized systems (which is allowed under FOIA).

Fortunately, a conversation with Southington’s town manager cleared up the issue and confirmed that the town is not charging for employee time spent searching for records. The information on the website, Alex Riccardione told me, was out of date and had been carried over in error from an older version of the town website after it was recently updated. Southington does not charge for time spent searching for records, and that language has since been removed from the town website.

Riccardione also told me that, as part of the town’s recent website updates, Southington launched an online portal used to track the FOIA requests they receive.

I love FOIA portals. The more the FOIA process becomes public-facing, the better it becomes, and FOIA portals enable this. If you’re familiar with federal FOIA, you know that most federal agencies have reading rooms where frequently requested records are made publicly available. Portals like Southington’s don’t necessarily give the public the same level of access to frequently requested records, but they do help the public see what’s being requested, how quickly public officials are handling requests, and what types of fees are being charged.

Southington isn’t the only town in the state that has this kind of tool. The University of Connecticut has a public-facing log, as does the town of Greenwich. While Connecticut FOIA doesn’t require the public disclosure of frequently requested documents, GovQA, the online portal most state agencies use to handle requests, does have the capability to do this, but it’s not currently utilized.

But Southington’s portal actually goes farther and doesn’t just record who requested what and when. For many requests, it includes all communication between the town and a requester. A move, Riccardione told me, that is at least partially meant to help deter people looking to use FOIA as a weapon to harass the town.

FOIA does, unfortunately, get abused. The FOIC has ruled in several vexatious requester cases where requesters clearly had no interest in obtaining public records but were instead abusing public agencies’ obligations under the law to harass town departments and employees.

Equally unfortunate is that when real or perceived abuses of the law occur, they’re often used as an excuse to narrow FOIA and to put categories of information that public officials might be exploiting outside the eyes of not just the guilty party but the public as a whole, and permanently neutering accountability.

What I like about Southington’s approach is that town officials are turning this on its head. Instead of looking to limit access to information, they’re harnessing FOIA’s transparency power and using it against bad actors. The message is: if you want to try to use FOIA to harass the town, prepare to have public scrutiny used against you.

There’s nothing unusual about this tactic. Almost any communication you have with a public official is subject to FOIA and possible public disclosure. Most emails from public officials contain a disclaimer about this. All Southington is doing is eliminating the step where you have to ask for this information and is instead making it publicly available to anyone who’s interested. And it’s really refreshing to see transparency be embraced in this way.

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