Ohio Audit: Public Records Withheld Half the Time

By: Mark Fitzgerald Ohio school districts need a remedial lesson in open-records law, according to an audit by 43 newspapers of public record accessibility across the Buckeye State.

When auditors approached school district offices as average citizens asking for the salary records of school superintendents and the phone bills for district treasurers, the offices complied fully with Ohio law only 30% of the time.

Results from similar public records requests to municipal offices and police stations in all 88 Ohio counties were not dramatically better. Overall, the first-ever audit of Ohio public records found that just 50% were handed over without conditions on the first day of the request, and another 3% were produced by the next day. In 17% of the requests, the information was turned over only under conditions not required by state law, such as putting the request in writing or directing it to the public body's attorney.

Nearly a third of the requests (30%) were turned down flat, the audit found.

Results of the test were published in participating newspapers and news organizations on Sunday. The sweeping audit was conducted on April 21 by more than 90 people from 43 newspapers, The Associated Press, two radio stations and two universities. The Ohio Coalition for Open Government, a group formed by the Ohio Newspaper Association, sponsored the audit, which was coordinated by two Cleveland Plain Dealer journalists, Managing Editor Tom O'Hara and Tom Gaumer, the computer-assisted reporting editor.

As in similar audits conducted in other states, the Ohio journalists requested records from offices where they were unlikely to be recognized as media employees, and did not identify themselves unless asked.

Results varied by region, with northeastern Ohio officials being among the most resistant to releasing information, according to a Plain Dealer story by Tom Breckenridge. In a survey conducted by the PD and the Akron Beacon Journal of 20 communities in the Cleveland metropolitan area, "record requests ... were granted hassle-free only a third of the time," the story stated.

But there were individual instances of official hostility and suspicion everywhere in the state, the audit found. The mayor of Youngstown, for instance, became personally involved when an auditor -- reporter Norman Leigh of The Vindicator, the local daily -- asked for his salary records. The mayor even tape-recorded the conversation, according to reports of the audit. Several auditors were hit up for fees ranging from $2 to $5 before they could see information -- some of which was blacked out just before it was handed over.

"It would be my hope that the public becomes outraged," state Rep. Scott Oelslager (R-Canton) told the PD. "These are the people's records. These records were paid for with tax dollars."